The Power

I found this book both entertaining and thought-provoking and would highly recommend it to anyone craving a page turner that doubles as an excellent conversation starter (...have you read....?)

At some points overly simplistic and uneven, “The Power” still provides readers with an interesting take on transformative power.

I found this book to be supremely boring. I finished it because I paid for it... but, I couldn't wait for it to end. It could have been a very interesting, suspenseful mystery, considering the premise...but it didn't go anywhere after the unusual power the women had was revealed. That was in the early part of the book and there was nothing interesting happening after that revelation. I wanted to like it, but felt it was a waste of time.

I wish I'd been warned about the level of violence in this book. When a character "deserves" it, it's understandable, but when it devolves into torture and sadism (described in great detail) then that is too much for me. Stopped reading at that point. It's too bad because this is a fascinating premise for a book. It could have been great.

Everyone should read this book! Ms Alderman takes generic arguments about gender differences and follows them ad absurdum...except with the traditional gender roles switched. This is super valuable piece of literature that we will be coming back to in the future.

This was an incredible read and ride! I'm still thinking about it many days after finishing it and am trying to get a bunch of friends to dive in, as well. I want to talk with more people about it! :)

Really great book for imagining “what would it be like if women ruled the world?”. I don’t agree with all of the author’s characterizations, but I definitely see the possibility in her vision. This is a great book to read if you consider yourself a feminist, woman or boy!

This is the first book in my 71 year’s I haven’t been able to finish. I bought it because Of Margaret Atwood but what a disappointment. Poorly written, unappealing characters and very boring in spite of the interesting concept.

A spectacular novel, and surely the favourite to sweep all the sci-fi book awards for 2017. People can be both cruel and good-intentioned, often at the same time. Introduce a new power imbalance, and society is abruptly transformed. Wonderful writing, and a whopper of a story twist.

Boring... meh? It was a true struggle to read it at times... I wrote a list of pros and cons - Pro was only one, the story itself was great and exciting. But then the rest of it got to be too much. Switching one character’s name completely was incredibly confusing. One character named Jocelyn was often shortened to Jos... also confusing. The story meandered quite a bit and eventually I forced myself to finish.

I will check out the series when that comes to fruition.

I got to the halfway mark on this book and had to quit. As a fan of The Handmaid's Tale, and other dystopian novels, I expected to love it. Based on reviews, an Obama endorsement, as well as one from Margaret Atwood, it seemed like a good bet. Not the case. I hate this book with every fiber of my being. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything for the characters. The entire premise is ridiculous. I found myself skipping paragraphs, chapters. The writing is clunky with dialogue that I could not imagine people saying. I am utterly disappointed. I was down for a good feminist apocalypse. I feel bad that I'm trashing a writer. But, oh no. Walk away from this book.

The power, what a great title. I really enjoyed how this book jumped from different perspectives. Also the story line was interesting. The reason that tis is getting a four and not a five is because it did not have the storybook ending that i so adore. But hey, all books are different. Over all I really enjoyed the book.

To call this a feminist novel may be detracting from the larger intent of the work. Alderman imagines a world where teenage girls suddenly find themselves in possession of an electrostatic power, or skein, and the at-first exhilarating, then devastating effects of how this reveal and subvert the power relations between men and women.

Alderman personalises the global concerns of this new phenomenon that stretches from Delhi to Riyadh, and London to the States. There’s Roxy, the daughter of a British crime lord; Allie, the American foster child who breaks out of her abuse and channels the strength of her sinister inner voice to become a spiritual leader of women at the convent she escapes to, and eventually beyond; Margot, a middle-aged American politician who succumbs to the lure of channeling her newfound strength she receives from her daughter Jocelyn to climb the rungs; and finally Tunde, the sole male focaliser, a Nigerian journalist who acts as a kind of multi-focal lens to show what it is like to suddenly be a man in a world ruled by women. At first, it is about overturning the oppressors and seeking justice, but this brave new world, for all its good intentions of gaining freedom and liberation, becomes a new kind of dystopia when the women turn ruthless and succumb to degenerate acts (including rape, violence and civil war) and we find that no one wins in the end.

At the end of the day, the novel is about power and how it corrupts. Allie, in her new role as Mother Eve, is betrayed by her inner voice when she comes to a crossroads and asks a basic question about right and wrong.

The voice tells her: “Your whole question is the mistake. Who’s the serpent and who’s the Holy Mother? Who's bad and who’s good? Who persuaded the other one to eat the apple? Who has the power and who’s powerless? All of these questions are the wrong question.… You can’t put anyone in a box… so i don't know where you think you get off labelling humans with simple words and thinking you know everything you need…. They say: only exceptional people can cross the borders. The truth is: anyone can cross, everyone has it in them. But only exceptional people can bear to look it in the eye.”

In other words, everyone has the potential to cross the line between good and evil, and as the book shows, not many people resist the opportunity to cross it when they are given the power to do so. A sobering allegory of sorts, which captivates.

This book was supposed to be a new copy and it arrived in very poor shape. It's dirty, and someone cut holes in the dust over with a sharp knife. The back cover (hard bound) is broken on the corner and the edge looks broken. The dust cover also looks like it
was waded up and then put back on the book. I am impressed by Alderman's writing, but not the seller.. Please report.

In Naomi Alderman’s The Power, 15-year-old girls develop an electric superpower–one touch results in excruciating pain for their victims, sometimes fatal. But there’s more. The teenage girls can awaken the power in other women, and soon half of the population possesses it. A new social order takes root.

From the outset, Alderman does a fine job of introducing her characters and setting up their world’s shifting power dynamics. She also works in quite a few thought-provoking lines.

“‘Now they will know…that they are the ones who should not walk out of their houses alone at night. They are the ones who should be afraid.'”

On the whole, I enjoyed the novel’s opening pages because it felt like it was building to something important, something revelatory.

I waited for Alderman to reveal that something…and kept waiting. To her credit, Alderman does demonstrate how the newfound power turns the world on its axis–nations fall, new religions are founded, men are the ones who avoid walking home alone at night.

We expect cataclysmic results, and she delivers. Unfortunately, the delivery feels stilted and detached. At times, it felt like I was reading a history textbook–even though some of the information is interesting, the writing is dry and not exactly engaging.

Halfway through the novel, I still felt virtually no connection to any of the characters or their plights. I had the most sympathy for Mother Eve before she was Mother Eve–as soon as she became a kind of self-appointed messiah, she started to feel as flat as the other characters.

I loved the premise and wanted to love the book, but it just didn’t work for me at all. It’s rare that I don’t finish a book, but when I passed the midway point and realized I had to force myself to pick it up, I decided to stop. I’d heard several negative reactions regarding the ending, so there was no incentive to hold out for that, either.

It’s certainly interesting to imagine what a world where women have this kind of power would be like (again, the idea really is fascinating!), but this book fell short for me.

Short Review: What starts as an interesting thought experiment with an interesting premise devolves into naked violence and cliches leading into an unsatisfying ending.

Longer Review: I was expecting something a great deal more nuanced and layered and metaphorical and with greater payoff than what this book plays to. It starts with an interesting idea: what if women suddenly gained the ability to wield electricity as a defensive and offensive ability (a la, an electric eel)? The idea is simple, so I expected that it would create an interesting mechanic by which modern society would begin to change, eventually for the better.

Instead, this book devolves into obscene levels of violence, crudeness and sexual depravity, and with little real reason to do so. Before I explain why, some context is needed.

The electrical ability in this book is presented with shadows of X-Men in it: through some mysterious event or happenstance, an entire generation of women the world over begin mutating and gaining the ability to generate and discharge substantial amounts of electricity. This starts out realistically enough; most women wield it like a fleshy, built in taser. Indeed, the book makes several blunt comparisons to electric eels. Except ... this concept rapidly falls into the trap of "THE SKY'S THE LIMIT!", and before you know it, women are shooting lightning bolts, blowing up cars, melting guns, and one women in particular remote-controls other people's muscle movements. At first, the author tries to seat this idea in realism, saying that the ability is genetic, and a new pseudo-organ muscle grows to give this ability. But the timing, rise, development, and saturation of this ability is exactly backwards to how actual biology works. What's more, electric eels have to dedicate most of their body mass to generating and storing electricity, not just a chunk of muscle in their shoulders. Finally, electric eels can only discharge a small amount in less than a second, as a stun attack; biology is not well suited to storing or discharging the levels of electricity that actually causes damage.

Setting all that aside, the most important bit here is that the story proposes that, in the span of one generation, and only a few years, nearly all of the world's women gain this ability, supposedly through a genetic, natural means, but also, stupidly, through a peer-to-peer activation process. Keep this point in mind as I continue the review.

So, women are getting this ability. Ostensibly, the book seems to setup a question of how this would change society as we know it. The story is structured in such a way that chapters bounce between about 4 women and 1 man. One of these women becomes a prophet for a new religious order, a bastardization of Catholicism, in a really stupid, contrived, and not well setup process. This religion piggybacks off of the rise of the electrical ability in women, and somehow it seems like everyone just accepts that this ability is God's divine will, or at least, we're never convincingly provided a counter-argument. Eventually, and through largely inorganic processes, things come to a head in one single country.

Here, the book devolves into levels of violence and depravity largely at odds with the initial idea setup. In one scene, the author spends more than a dozen paragraphs graphically and uncompromisingly describing how a gang of women brutally rape then murder a man.

Without spoilers, I have to say that I *get* what the author was doing in this scene, and others, and how the book ends. On the one hand, okay, sort of clever, interesting ploy, neat-o. On the other hand, the end result is not terribly clever, is unremarkable, and simply inverts basic stereotypes without any new spin.

The problem with this type of twist is that it's at odds with the quasi-realistic opening of the book, because it demands you see the third-act events as almost entirely metaphorical or allegorical. Further, it requires you to believe that men and women are essentially the same flawed monsters that would inflict unrelenting levels of violence and pain on others as soon as they know they can (which is to suggest that no one is guided by ethical models independent of their biology or circumstances). Third, it requires you to forget that all of the book's events are happening in the span of 10 years; in other words, everyone apparently loses their minds and divorces themselves from society in general and acts entirely in the service of "can I?" rather than "should I?".

To some degree, I admire what the author was striving for; there's an obligatory look into the Middle East and how things would very rapidly change there once women gained this ability. On the one hand, I could see it. On the other, staid political, theological, and cultural institutions are far more effective at oppressing people and stripping them of power and self-agency than simply "I am physically stronger than you, so obey me". For that reason, this book is almost insulting, in that it plays off of stereotypes about why men and women are different. Plus, frankly, this book assumes that bombs and planes and guns somehow become entirely ineffective at stopping riots (the author tries to tackle this to some degree, with as much finesse as you might imagine).

Ultimately though, the book's conclusion is unremarkable and cliche and plays to the old adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

But beyond the philosophical faults, this book also has a number of mechanical issues. 70% of the time, the narrative is sharp and clean and evocative, and it works. The problem is that the author gets too creative, too sparse, too minimalistic with the other 30%, and this results in oftentimes confusing attributions when characters are interacting with each other. It results in vague action sequences, some of which I had to re-read in order to understand, some of which I never did quite understand. Beyond this, I could never quite sympathize with most of the characters. One of them is a literal criminal kingpin, but whom later gets played as the "good guy". One is a journalist with a confusing relationship with a domestic terrorist group. Another is an abused young woman who becomes a priestess and hears a voice (the likes of which is played too much like it's a real entity of some kind; in any case, it's never clearly explained. Another character is an older mother that becomes a war hawk with no real explaination of why.

To wrap up, this book started with a unique and interesting idea. It could have done something really clever and nuanced. Instead, the author tries too hard to capture too many ideas, resulting increasingly in a jumbled, discordant story sprawling across multiple countries and years and viewpoints. This eventually leads to a rapid, vague, ugly, vapid ending that plays off tired cliches and invites you to entertain the idea of a bizarro world version of reality. Parts of this story are clever and worth considering, but between the narrative issues and the weak ethical explorations, it's more frustrating than it's worth.

Book: The Power
Author: Naomi Aldernam
Rating: 1 Out of 5 Stars

This is another Our Shared Shelf book. I’m only a few months behind now on my reading and reviews for the group.

So, I guess this is supposed to be one of the best books of 2017....I see...Well, now, if it were up to me, I would consider this to be one of the top books of 2017. In fact, I really don’t understand how this book is so popular and how it won so many awards. Personally, I think the whole thing is a hot mess.

The plot line just sounded okay to start out with, but I decided to give it a try because it was a group book. Normally, I would not have picked up anything like this, because it’s really not my cup of tea. I mean, women having powers to defend themselves is great and the men having to find ways to protect themselves...Well, now, that I think about it, this does sound like a great book. It gives men a chance to live in fear-something that many women live in every day.

However, it felt like there was no focus. I felt like I was just being told about a concept, but no story. I don’t know, it just seemed like everything had been thrown together without any proper focus or editing. I really feel like had we had a decent editor, everything would had been better. It almost felt like everything was being forced for the sake of a deadline instead of allowing things to develop on their own. That’s the feeling I got from this book.

The plot that we were expecting and got was really different. I was expecting something very complex and engaging, but, instead, I got something that was very simple and not well developed. I felt like parts that would have made everything make more sense, were just gazed over. The plot also called for women to throw out their culture, aka, Muslims, which kind of bothered me. I just don’t think women in the real world would give up their culture so easily-again had there been more development, this would had been more clear.

I thought that the characters were not interesting at all. They blended into one and were not developed at all. I honestly feel like if you are going to write a book like this, you need to have strong characters to really make the world come out to the reader. It felt like Naomi had created some of the characters just for the sake of filling the book up. Some many of them did not add to the plot. It almost felt like, once again, Naomi was forcing some of the characters, instead of letting them develop on their own.

Again, I feel like this has a lot of promise, but it’s just a mess with zero focus and a lack of development.

My daughter rated this as one of the worst books ever. After she finished it, she left me a note on the cover of the book, "This book sucks." I read the first 39 pages before I gave up and added it to the Goodwill pile. She's right, it sucked. Violent and dark, not my kind of book at all. She said she only finished it because she "can't just not finish a book."

This book is god awful. Nothing makes sense. The writing is absolutely horrendous. I only forced myself to read it for a book club, and was in pain every page of the way. I cannot comprehend how this even became a book and the author even got a book deal. Hands down, the worst book I have ever read in my life.

Rarely has a cover blurb told you everything you need to know about a book before you read it. In this case, the blurb is by none other than Margaret Atwood, and her blurb says "Electrifying! Shocking!" and so on. If you haven't heard about this book by now (a) you may be living under a large rock and (b) the plot premise is that women develop the power (i.e., The Power) to send electric shocks through their hands. The Power changes things pretty much immediately and universally, except, well, not so much -- for reasons I cannot divulge.

The central plot device and the denouement are as witty as Ms. Atwood's blurb, and Ms. Alderman handles both very nicely, thank you. The book is a quick read and with few exceptions gripping from start to finish. The drama comes in vignettes, which means that the reader has to work a little -- not too much, but just enough to make it a bit more challenging than if it were a straight linear narrative.

I wouldn't call this book science fiction as much as "alternative fiction" -- which is how it has been aptly billed. It's a great, challenging and somewhat disappointing take on the battle of the sexes, and well worth reading -- and thinking about.

DONT WASTE YOUR TIME. If I could give this book one million negative stars, I would have. The Fifty Shades of Gray series is a literary masterpiece compared to this trash. I had high hopes of reading something controversial that could provide a different perspective with regard to female empowerment. Now I have to read half a dozen good books to cleanse my mental pallet from the trash this book generated. On the good side, if this received awards....I'm destined to be a literary master!

Favorite Quote: “And can you call back the lightning? Or does it return to your hand?”

The Power is an amazing feat of speculative fiction by Naomi Alderman. Girls all over the world realize they have a newly developed ability to blast electrical arcs from their bodies. As they wake the power up in older women, the balance of power in the world begins to shift. Women, long held captive by fear and and inequality, use their power to take control, creating riot groups, new nations, and worldwide faith organizations. The book rotates through character perspectives. Margot, an aspiring political leader, tries to find the best policy to guide The Change. Tunde is a journalist trying to capture the heart of social tensions in Europe and the Middle East. Allie is an abused runaway who manages to channel her power into a matter of faith, creating a loyal following of female worshipers reshaping modern religion. Roxy is the fierce daughter of a British gang syndicate, and possibly possesses the strongest power of all. These characters view The Change from their own corners of the world, and watch as global society struggles with the revolution of power.

The Power is a gem. Alderman’s book verges on Atwoodian women’s fiction, but manages to stay entirely unique and original in both delivery and content. Alderman doesn’t just ponder the consequences of women pretty much gaining a super power; she performs high-quality world building. Her brand new world is totally rooted in modern truths and realities. She often makes cheeky jabs at the reversal of gender dynamics, like when her male narrator, Tunde, confesses he is scared to walk down the road at night. The plot is very busy-we are taken to the hills of Moldova, as an uprising creates Bessapara, a women-run nation that eventually verges on a dictatorship. Alderman’s novel actually ends up straying from “girl power,” instead showing that the “power” is easy to use for evil reasons. The women become as violent and authoritarian as men have been in real life. Momentarily, I wondered if this ruined the book for me, if I would have preferred to believe that women gaining a violent power and running the world would only have good results. However, I have come around to appreciate the bigger picture Alderman presents to us of gender dynamics. Power of any sort requires balance, and good and evil isn’t separated by biological differences. She manages to present this concept while maintaining the emotional impact of switching gender inequality. Even thought the book almost ends up emphasizing the speculative fiction more than the feminist ideals, she presents us with scenes that are heart-wrenching imaginations of women taking back their autonomy. Specifically, she narrates a scene in which a group of sex trafficking captives overtake their oppressors, eventually becoming the catalyst for the foundation of Bessapara. This scene tugged so harshly and hopefully at my heart. If only this power was real, am I right?

Despite a busy plot, her characters remain distinct and interesting. Allie was my favorite to dig into. Her troubled past of abuse at the hands of her stepfather is something that too many of us can empathize with. She becomes a religious prophet for the masses, leading her followers on a path to completely change the world, even if she has to destroy it first. Through her narrative, we witness some powerful changes to the idea of religion. “They have said to you that man rules over woman as Jesus rules over the church. But I say unto you that woman rules over man as Mary guided her infant son, with kindness and with love.” God becomes “She”, as they embrace their woman goddess. I particularly love the unnecessary level of sacrilige that these changes embody. Allie preaches that their god is still the same god, but that She has now taken the form of a woman, and that Mary’s role in Christianity is now the primary basis of their faith. As a non-religious person, this philosophy is incredibly interesting to me.

For all of its strengths, I will say that The Power is incredibly ambitious. I don’t think any of its business necessarily detracted from its quality, but this is one of those books that I would’ve patiently read over a series or saga. I found myself wondering even after the novel concluded. Given that the events of “the Change” take place over the entire world, I would have liked to delve even deeper into more of the societal changes taking place in different regions. I also wondered what the novel would have looked like if it took place in a first-world country, instead of largely in Moldova. I think Alderman could have had a great saga on her hands.

I think The Power will eventually be looked on as a classic of women’s literature. It is simply so impressive and important, and such a grandiose scale of gender dynamics. I appreciate Alderman’s nuances so much, and the fact that every act and comment in her novel is heavy with purpose. She closes her novel with a correspondence between herself and another author, Neil, who has been writing the preceding novel. It seems that, after the results of the novel, the world erupted into a nuclear war, known as the Cataclysm, and they are now reviewing historical documents indicating that women have long been the dominant sex. Naomi, giving feedback to Neil, makes a suggestion to reach a wider audience. “Neil,” she says. “I know this might be very distasteful to you, but have you considered publishing this book under a woman’s name?”

I sat and stared at my Kindle for several minutes after finishing this book. The Power belongs on the same shelf as The Handmaid's Tale and American War. It's just amazing. The book begins in our world - but then takes a twist sideways. Teenage girls start manifesting an electrical power. They can zap people, with varying degrees of strength. It can be a pleasing, arousing tingle, or a warning jolt, or a breath-stealing, heart-stopping (literally) bolt. They soon discover that older women can also manifest the ability, but it has to be kick-started by a jolt from someone who already has it. (Even later in the book it's revealed that there's actually a muscle - they call it the skein - that controls the electricity, and women have, in the last twenty years or so, evolved to have that muscle.)

The book revolves between the points of view of a few different women and one man. The man is a journalist reporting on the emergence of the new power, while the women are prominent figures in the new world order that is emerging. Allie - Eve - becomes the leader of a new religion, Roxy is the daughter of a crime syndicate boss, and Margot is a mayor climbing the political ranks. Margot's daughter also gets a few chapters.

It's been pointed out that perhaps men are afraid of women having equal rights because they can't picture a world in which powerful women don't treat men the way powerful men have always treated women. They can only imagine men and women interacting as oppressors and oppressed, not as equals. Whereas feminism wants a world where we are truly equals. The Power imagines a world where women do become the oppressors, and men are forced into the feminine role. This is enforced by the framework the novel is told in - the novel itself is bracketed by letters between the "author," presenting his historical novel, and a woman supposedly editing his work. Through the letters, you discover the novel is a slightly embellished history of their world, with about five thousand years between the events of the novel and the time of the letters. In the tone of the letters, you see the stereotypes switched - the man is apologetic and unsure while the woman is authoritative, patronizing, and a little bit sexist. "Oh, you silly boy, imagining a world where men were dominant! What a naughty idea! Don't you think men as soldiers is preposterous? Men are homemakers, women are the aggressive ones!" I think, if feminism achieves its goals through legislation, we will find true equality. If something like this were to happen - a drastic change, giving women a physical way to dominate suddenly, the outcome might indeed be more like the novel. Enough women have been traumatized that they'll want - need - to avenge themselves, and violent upheaval will result.

By the last third of the novel, we see powerful women and societies acting just the same as powerful men always have - I'd like to think we'd have learned from the men's mistakes, but humans are only human. Perhaps this is more realistic.

The book is NOT for the faint of heart. There are graphic rape, abuse, and violence scenes. They're not gratuitous - they serve the author's point - but they are still disturbing, as those scenes should be.

I'll be thinking about this book for a while. It's excellent, and I highly recommend it, if you can handle the dark themes.

"You cannot get there from here."

The Power was not a light read; it was not comfortable. It was weighty and important composed of layers and layers just waiting to be peeled back. I went into it without any real expectations, but still, I never could have imagined this novel would turn out to be what it is.

On the Day of the Girls, young women around age 13 suddenly discover that their skein, a previously unrecognized organ over their collarbone, has come alive. Through it, they are able to channel dangerous amounts of electricity through their hands. Some have more power, and some have less, but all the girls seem to have it. New babies are born with it, and the young can wake it up in women older than them.

"The men flinch. The women stare hungrily. Their eyes are parched for the sight of it."

We follow four(ish) different characters' storylines, separate and also intertwined, as the world begins to change. Schools are segregated by gender; men are afraid. Developed societies try to pretend it will go away someday, and countries in which women have long been oppressed discover that they are powerless no longer. Some women hide it, some seek to do good, and some become drunk with their new power. The gender imbalance that exists today, in real life, reverses.

“It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”

I have not read anything else like this, either in books or online. It speaks to the pain and anger that many women feel nowadays; what would happen to the world if those feelings were suddenly unleashed? If something tipped, all at once, and striking back was easy? Women are not morally superior to men just because women are oppressed and men are the oppressors. Everyone is a human being, and no matter your gender, power corrupts—totally. "Power has her ways. She acts on people, and people act on her." This isn't something I have ever considered before, and it has already started a major shift in my way of thinking about the world.

Naomi Alderman's writing is superb. Every single word is chosen with care, and nothing means only one thing. It's hypnotizing, in fact. The biblical references throughout are masterful (casual example: "...the imaginations of young people, which are now what they have always been and ever shall be"). Even apart from the character arcs that are definitively biblical, as the idea of God shifts from God the Father to God the Mother, references to religion and the way humanity bends and shapes it to our will is a constant hum in the back of the book's subconscious.

"This is how it works. The younger women can wake it up in the older ones; but from now on all women will have it."

I also think one of my favorite things—one of the things I most admire that Alderman did—was that this power woke up in young women and spread to the older generations. And from now on, the younger ones will have it, the older ones will have it; a tipping point was reached, and the young women changed the way women existed, and none of them can ever un-know what they now know. Does that sound familiar to anyone else?

And the story would have been enough to keep my mind working for a good, long time, but the structure of the novel—and its ending—added so much more. I won't say more on that here because it was so powerful for me to come into it on my own, but wow.

And that recurring quote—"You cannot get there from here"—the depth of that sentence still has me reeling. Are we too wounded to get there from here? To build a world that's good for everyone, so scarred by everything that has come before?

There is so, so much more to be said on this, but I don't think I've even begun to internalize it all yet. I'm really excited to discuss it with other women at a book club meetup in a few weeks. It's one of those books that just need discussion.

Just...trust me. Don't miss this one.

This review originally appeared on my blog, deedireads.wordpress.com.

This was truly one of the worst written books I’ve ever read. The prose was so excruciating; it felt like a fifth grader’s stream of consciousness. The kernel of the idea is not a bad one but the execution was quite poor.

Girls find themselves with the power of electricity, fingers tingling with its beginnings, energy coming from striated muscles along the collarbone, strong enough in some cases to electrocute without much effort at all. Alderman's story sprawls across the globe, a far-reaching look at how upending the patriarchy might not go exactly the way anyone expects.
An American politician does her best to protect herself and her daughter from the prying eyes of the media — and a society focused on teaching girls to suppress and control their strength. The lone daughter of a British crime family finds herself with almost immeasurable power and yearns to use it to sit as her father's equal. A Nigerian male carefully documents what he sees, taking care not to threaten anyone who could end his life with the touch of a hand. A forgotten foster child hears a voice that drives her to speak for the Goddess, gathering power around her until she can find an outlet for it all. 
Nothing in The Power appears without thought. Alderman thinks of the history of power, the possibility that women unleashed this electricity as a way to protect their children. She adds science and anatomy, strength and weakness, ambition and ambivalence until tension hurls the main characters toward one another. As the story unfolds, Alderman tempers the threat with humor, though discontent grows in every corner of the world. But girls and women will grimly recognize the worries parents now have for their sons — the way boys have to travel in groups, to be careful when they're alone with girls, to be at the mercy of someone who can easily overpower them. Still, transitioning from a patriarchy to a matriarchy won't happen without a fight. Women may have electricity, but armies still have guns and weapons of war and a desperate need to hold onto the power structure that's benefited males for generations.
Although the power structure shifts, violence sprouts up in familiar ways — rape, torture, and blind rage are not owned by men alone. Women may want to think that, if given power, we would value kindness over force. However, with years of fear pressing at our backs, that may not be quite as easy as we think.

I don’t really get why this book is getting so much acclaim. The first 2/3 is pretty engrossing and we’ll-written, I’ll give it that. But it starts with a premise with so much potential and then doesn’t go anywhere interesting with it! The book poses a basic question: what would happen if suddenly all the women in the world developed a super power that made them physically stronger than men?

There are all sorts of ways an imaginative author could go with that, helping provide insight into the relationship between the genders in real life. But in Ms. Alderman’s vision, it’s just a straight up role reversal. In today’s world, men’s sins range from condescension and mansplaining on up through systematized misogyny and rape/violence against women. In the post-change world, women abruptly shift to become condescending, misandrist, and violent...in precisely the way men are. No nuances about how women might become just as corrupted by power as men but in different ways, no exploration about how women deal with deeply-ingrained gender structures they were raised with that are now suddenly at odds with physical reality, it’s all just men and women swapping roles. *yawn*. I guess that might be fun to read if you’re cranky about the patriarchy (and who isn’t, really?) but if you are eager for a book that will offer a new perspective on gender and society, this is not that.

I look to speculative fiction to make me think about things in new ways, and found this attempt disappointing.

Narrated by Adjoa Andoh (She's a mum on Doctor Who), The Power is about a message of what someone's seen in the distant future, but shared with someone in our present time. Something has happened to the females of the world. Something has awakened. It is sweet as honey, but powerful as an electrical storm. It is within each and every woman, young and old, but must be awakened if it doesn't do it all on its own. That's what frightens the world the most. But why has this happened? Who did it and what is it for?

The book shares political ideas and views on how men are supposedly superior to women in every way, through news reports and experiences. But what if woman suddenly gained an advantage? Would the world truly become a better place, or would they, like most powerful men, exploit their gifts? There are cults created, riots break out, everyone's trying to find their place in the world when this "Even" strikes up. Through the lives of three particular women and one man, the story shows how chaotic things can be should a major shift affect the social dynamic.

Though it was interesting, it just was not what I'd expected. I desired so much more. I can honestly say, it's not a bad book- just not for me. Fair enough? I'll leave it at that and say if you like The Handmaid's Tale, you may like this- but it's not the same in the least.

I'm off to the next read. Cheers!
*Full review: www dot areneehunt dot com

The Power
Naomi Alderman
Little, Brown and Company, October 2017
416 pages/12 Hr 5 min audiobook
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian

*** Major spoilers ahead ***

There's an old saying: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This idea lies behind Alderman's book, in a world where, suddenly, women gain the power to harness electricity from their hands. No matter how physically strong they may be, men are no match for the raw power women have, and the balance of the world changes.

Written from the perspective of a man five thousand years in the future, we already know how the world turns out: women are in control, men are subservient. He is asking a woman for a review of his new book, that challenges the contemporary cultural perspective of female power. Deep in the past is an event called "the cataclysm" when ancient civilization fell; most data from before that time has been long destroyed.

We're then plunged inside his book, viewing current society through the lens of four major characters: Allie, who will become the prophetess of a new, women-centric religion; Roxy, daughter of a British gang leader who has more raw power than anyone else; Margot, a woman with strong political ambition; and Tunde, a male Nigerian reporter who gains fame from documenting the rise of women. We follow them through ten years as the "power" becomes mainstream, and the very roles we assume as masculine and feminine are shifted, forever.

There are some who compare it to "A Handmaid's Tale", but that's a bad comparison. The women in that book are motivated by their powerlessness, their character arcs driven by their hopeless situation. Here, the women are products of a completely different world. How would Offred react if she suddenly had the ability to destroy the Commander? What if all the handmaids could do the same? Afterwards, what if they looked at a male-dominated planet who'd allowed Gilead (and other abusive regimes) to exist, and could form society into whatever they wanted -- along with the ability to prevent men from having a voice in the change. How much justice is enough? Can vengeance be sated before the world settles into a new, equally unequal pattern?

As a man, the book made me feel uncomfortable more than a few times. I imagine it makes most women feel the same way, even if at different points. That's what makes it effective. As more and more women become empowered against the men who've abused their own power, it reminds us that we must not only bring equality to the distribution of power, but the very concept of "power" itself must be redefined.

It’s not too surprising that there is a flood of fiction hitting the market these days about women and their responses to generations of systemic subjugation and abuse. Maybe it's time for a new genre—vengeance fiction? Whatever the genre, The Power by Naomi Alderman is a fierce and provocative novel about what happens when evolution (possibly aided by manmade chemicals) steps in and suddenly, women are no longer defenseless against males who make unwelcome advances, harass or attack. Instead, beginning with teenage girls, females can produce electricity through their hands. In short order, these girls can pass the ability on to older women and soon all females have the power. At first, men try and control the situation with mandatory testing and firing of female employees shown to have the ability and segregation of teenage girls in schools, but as the gift spreads, the power structure is upended and the novel erupts.

Allie, Roxy, Margot, and Tunde are the three standard bearers for the world Alderman creates in The Power. Shortly after discovering her ability Allie quickly sheds her past and styles herself as a new-order religious leader, Mother Eve. Roxy is a British teen whose father runs a small scale criminal enterprise. Where Allie has finesse and patience with her power, Roxy has brute force—more wattage and capabilities than anyone she encounters. Her upbringing makes her perfectly suited to providing the muscle Allie needs to achieve her goals. In return, Roxy finally has control over her world. Margot is the novel’s only adult, having had her power activated by her teenage daughter. A mayor of a large U.S. city she has much bigger ambitions. And Tunde is the only male in the novel who is able to move amongst women unfettered. From Nigeria, he uploads one of the first videos of a girl jolting a man who is harassing her and quickly becomes the foremost reporter on the power. He travels the world, studying, interviewing and documenting what is happening. Using these four, Alderman encapsulates the real forces that are always behind the power: religion, government, the media, and the military.

I complain about plot overload. A lot. I imagine there are readers who felt that way about The Power, but Alderman marshals her forces in a way that swept me along with the story without pulling me under. The novel is a book within in a book, in that it opens with a male historian sending a female counterpart a manuscript. It soon becomes clear that they live 5,000 years after the power appeared in women and the ‘history’ we’re about to read occurs at some point in our future. With that, Alderman begins peeling back the layers on what lies ahead. She carefully works her way around the globe and women who have been enslaved in every way imaginable slowly find their way to this gift and begin to use it to tear down the structures of the patriarchy. Men fall…and fall…and fall in this dark novel and I, for one, didn’t feel bad about it.

But The Power is science fiction not a fairy tale. It would be safe to think that, as we see females now, nurturing and collaborative, so they would remain if given the biological ability to dominate males, to completely change the landscape of the world.  But what if that is just a construct based on centuries of religious, military, governmental, and media pressure? And what would a new world look like if that construct were obliterated? Suffice it to say, Alderman doesn’t go easy on either gender. The Power is a dark, turbo-charged novel I could not put down. Even in the final sentence, as my mind was already short circuiting from all my thoughts about what I’d read, she throws one last hook and MIND. BLOWN.

Wow! Imagine a world where the women take over. Men are controlled by women and women make the decisions. No man is permitted to do anything or go anywhere without a woman's approval. That's the premise of The Power.

I liked it. A lot. Roles are reversed. The thoughts and words have changed gender. Men control very little and only with the approval of women.

I was so into the story I forgot that it is a story that will be a novel of the time when the world changed from men leading to women leading. The set-up to and from the novel is done through letters from the author to a friend. Since he cannot tell the history as history, he does it as a novel. It works very well this way. I forgot it was a novel and was looking at it as ...hmmm, what if?

I liked how it is done by years and each year is seen from the main characters point-of-view. I liked Roxy. She's tough and a survivor. Allie started to believe her PR. So does Margot. I'm not sure whether the two of them become hinderances or return to the light. Allie's voice makes me wonder--serpent or angel. I also enjoyed Tunde and his male point-of-view of what is happening

Power defines people both individually and as a group; when the power shifts from patriarchal to matriarchal, as in Naomi Alderman's The Power, unrest brews and a ploy to attain more power unravels.

After years of living with men in control of the world, teenage girls find that they have gained a power  - a power that can inflict pain on others through conducting and focusing electricity - and they can help to activate it in older women. As younger girls come into their power fear rises among people, primarily men whose seat of power is now under threat from women. With much of history with women as the center of all things, the reshaped and re-imagined historical documentation of the women's rise to power and control over society through the perspective of a few select characters shows an entertaining, though unfathomable, tale.

Poignant in its commentary on society and demonstrating how power is able to corrupt and generally thought-provoking, there were good concepts and ideas presented throughout the story, yet the execution wasn't as strong or developed as the ideas, leaving an disconnect between the reader and the characters and events driving the story forward. Framed as a book proposal that explores history, the unbalanced distribution of character perspective led chapters felt drawn out at times and at others felt like it moved too quickly. In portraying an alternate future/history for society, the manner in which the narrative is compiled and presented to the reader is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale but with a supernatural twist of females being able to wield an electrifying power.

This book is compulsively readable, so if you're l but looking for something to get you out of a reading slump, this is it.

Imagine if teenage girls and women suddenly developed the power to inflict immense pain and cause sudden death. What might that kind of world look like?

The Power switches back and forth between several different perspectives over the course of 10 years—from the time the power begins to its climactic culmination. Among the perspectives are Roxy, the daughter of a London crime family; Tunde, a male reporter; Margot, an opportunistic local politician; and Allie, a troubled teen who initiates a cult-like movement that may end up changing the course of humanity.

The pace is fast, relentless and almost immediately engrossing. This is no literary masterpiece, but it's a damn fun read with some thought-provoking themes and ideas. Alderman plays with the narrative in a clever Atwood-inspired way that transforms the story into more than what it originally appears, challenging us to consider how history is written and remembered.

I didn't love everything about this book. I'm not sure I buy all of Alderman's implications about what would happen to a world in which women possessed unbridled power. Much of it wasn't as nuanced as I would prefer. Nevertheless, it entertained the hell out of me and gave me a lot to think about (even if wind up disagreeing).

This is sort of a weird one for me to rate. I understand why someone would give it 1 star. I understand why someone would give it 5 stars. I felt it finished stronger than it began so I’m rating favorably.. but really, it could go either way.

So content warnings: this book is super dark. Rape. Child Abuse. Torture. Mutilation.

The characters took a LOT of time to grow on me. I really didn’t care for any of them at first. Tunde was sort of boring with no power of his own and his viewpoint didn’t make much sense. Allie came from the crappiest, hardest beginnings and then turned into a nun, abbess, what have you. Margot’s political ambitions annoyed me. Roxy was probably my favorite character and the most consistent through out. They did grow on me eventually, and their stories are very uneven in that none of them are really grabbing you all at the same time.

There is plenty of action, but the pacing feels slow because it takes so long to care. I’m not sure how I feel about the plot- Alderman poses some great questions, and I needed to reflect a bit after completing it, but the way in which she delivers the questions I didn’t find wholly believable. She seems to posit that women are oppressed all over the world because they are the physically weaker sex but I think there is much more to it than that. Cultural elements for sure are at play. There are several Christian women at my workplace who believe they exist to serve their husbands, and that their husbands happiness is also their happiness, they brought sin into the world and therefore need men to guide them... etc. etc. <—- They aren’t doing this because they can’t walk away at any given moment, or because their husband is physically stronger than they are, they live this way because that is their belief system. Giving them the power of Thor isn’t going to change that overnight. (Please know I am not saying this about all Christians or even that this is wrong, I’m making an observation about this particular group, that is all.)

Furthermore she seems to suggest that if women were naturally stronger than men they’d be naturally more violent. This is something I didn’t buy into. I appreciate the question it poses but I don’t believe the answer she arrived at. Perhaps I’m being naive. But if you gave me the ability to kill anyone with the zap of a finger- I wouldn’t be naturally more inclined to say - “Oh yeah! Murder! Rape! War! Now there’s something I’ve always wanted to do!” I don’t know. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief needed here.

My favorite part of the whole book- was actually the letters at the end. Because they were ultimately the sliver of truth in the whole book. ***SPOILERS AHEAD*** They are between a writer and his friend, asking for her thoughts on his book which poses an alternate history of the world they live in, and which presumably, you’ve just read about. They talk about how History was rewritten by the church, and copied over so many times there were undoubtedly errors. They also talk about how you can look at history and know something is missing but you can never know what isn’t there. This is so true and such an important piece of information to reflect on. History is being re-written all the time. Better that we don’t think of it as hard proven fact. ***END SPOILERS***

My final note is about the writing- which honestly just wasn’t for me. Sometimes It was fine, and other times it broke down into short choppy sentences whose overall meanings were hard to parse out.

So- I gave it four stars because I like books that make me think, but I honestly don’t think much is being missed by not reading this.

5 Completely Rad and Rockin Stars.

There are some novels that you feel, from the tips of your fingers, all the way to the bottoms of your toes. This is one of them.

All at once, something happens, something strange, something inexplicable and yet, one by one.. every teenage girl experiences it. A feeling simply overtakes them and they strike out at everyone who has wronged them.

She feels the thing like pins and needles along her arms. Like needle-pricks of light from her spine to her collarbone, from her throat to her elbows, wrists, to the pads of her fingers. She's glittering, inside.

What can she do with it you ask? She touches you: a slight touch to the wrist and an electric current flows from her body to yours and her body awakens, she feels wholly alive. And you? You are in pain and you cannot move. It surges through you like a hot flame, rippling down your forearm, searing your skin, crackling and yet you can’t help but feel the excitement building, even if “The Power” kills you.

When girls come into their power, it is visible to all, through a skein on their necks. A movement is on the rise, in the good ole’ US of A and across the World. What starts out as girls trying to stop boys from overstepping, from harassing them, becomes something else entirely.

Allie’s home life was less than stellar, yet she escaped and now she takes care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Now known as Mother Eve, she oversees everyone and everything.

Roxy is a gal with sass. Her family is unlike most: they are London gangstas. She is the best and brightest and her abilities are unmatched. If you aren’t with her, you’re against her.

Tunde is a photographer. Once things go haywire.. bzzzt...his photos go national and he boldly follows the stories no one else dares.

Margot is a politician and she would like to believe that she’s making a difference in these trying times even though her own daughter Jocelyn struggles more than most. Margot’s arrogant, egotistical and unqualified male boss (who kind of reminded me of someone..) is planning to run for re-election which ends up igniting a fire in Margot too.

Their paths converge at different points in time and after that, well, all hell breaks loose.

At times, I shifted, edgy, uncomfortable, eyes wide - amazed. Then, unexpectedly, the corners of my mouth would haphazardly curve into a smile, in complete bewildered awe. Then I was horrified at myself for my inability to control my own reactions and scared by what was transpiring, I simply shuddered. “The Power” is transformative, in more ways than one. There is one scene, that I cannot unsee, one scene, that I admit got to me. And yet, it is sheer brilliance. I cannot help but be astounded.

If the dominant roles shifted and girls and women ruled the world, what would happen? Would boys and better yet, men, submit or would they fight back? Hmm.. food for thought, especially now, given the state of this nation. The parallels to today’s political climate were glaringly obvious and brilliant to boot.

Kudos to Naomi Alderman for her foresight, her storytelling and her amazing characters. This novel rocked my world and definitely belongs on my favorites shelf for 2018 and is one I highly recommend if you’re not afraid of a little sizzle.

Thank you to my friend Susan for the recommendation! You were right, I'm so glad I read this.

Published on Goodreads, the store and Twitter on 8.24.18.

“A world run by women would be a gentler, more peaceful place.”
“If countries were run by mothers rather than fathers, there would be no war; what mother would send her children into battle?”
“If women had all the power, these things wouldn’t happen.”

These are things I have heard—and often agreed with—in my life. But this book deconstructed that for me in some ways. Because the truth is that gender isn’t the culprit of violence; the culprit is power. When one group has the greater power, they will exercise it for their own benefit. The weaker will resist, perhaps, but power always wins. Power is always seeking ways to expand and grow, no matter who wields it. There’s a reason we have the saying “drunk on power”—because it’s addictive. It makes us our worst selves. And once we start to wield power, it’s hard to stop.

So here’s the idea of the book: women develop an organ that generates electric pulses, allowing them to inflict harm on others. There’s an abused orphan girl who becomes the high priestess of a new religion, the illegitimate daughter of a crime boss who is the strongest the world has ever seen, the trophy wife of an Eastern European ruler who rises to power in his place, and an ambitious mayor who maneuvers herself into ever higher ranks. In each powerful woman, we see their initial principles—each wants to make the world better, to prevent the suffering they have experienced from happening to anyone else—give way to corruption. Each is inevitably corrupted by power, leading to a global conflict that sends the world back to the dark ages to start again.

This book plays on some familiar experiences of women’s suffering but places them in reverse: rape of civilians by soldiers, sexual harassment, marginalization, genital mutilation, honor killings, legal structures meant to restrict agency, silencing, disenfranchisement. The events of this book have been taken directly from the pages of history and newspapers—radicalism in middle eastern countries, the 2016 election—reimagined with women as the perpetrators of power and violence on men. There’s an easily detectable trace of Margaret Atwood’s influence in the story as well, and Alderman credits Atwood first in her acknowledgements. In some ways, the book is a gender-flipped Handmaid’s Tale. As a teacher, I’d present these books side by side for study.

The book is a warning to us all, not about the need to fear one gender or race or group above others, but about the evils of power. Even those with the most pure intentions are corrupted by unchecked power. Power leads to violence. And none of us escapes unscathed.

This allegory opens with the “Book of First Samuel,” a fitting, cogent summary of its major theme: the acquisition of power and the determination to hold on to it by means necessary and unnecessary. The “Book of Eve,” a counterpart to “Samuel,” the inclusion of drawings that illustrate a goddess theology, and the biological mutation make this work brilliantly new. In less deft hands, this could have been a screed on the righteousness of girl power. But, making every female an angelic goddess, and every male past puberty her evil enemy, would have been taking the easy way out. Instead through alternating chapters, four very different people reveal complex familial and political relationships in the shifting social landscape. Allie, Roxy, Margot, and the one male speaker, Tunde spring from different cultures, homelands, and experiences. They are linked by their new-found positions in the power hierarchy or proximity to that power. They also speak for Tatiana, who is without a direct voice; yet, she is a major figure in the sometimes subtle, frequently brutal transfer of power. And there is a lot of violence here; many of the scenes are hard to watch. But, by witnessing increasingly gratuitous cruelty as the story advances, we cannot escape the reality that “the shape of power is always the same.”

This is such a hard book to review for me, because there are so many things about The Power that I really loved, but then there are a few big things I wasn't the biggest fan of. The Power has had a lot of hype surrounding it, and it's been compared to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (which I have not read, but I did watch the show) and I was really excited to pick it up. When there's a feminist book getting praise, you know I am here for it.

First, the characters. This story is split up into a handful of characters. The main ones being Tunde, Margot, and Roxy. Some side characters get a chapter or two also. I think some characters got more development time than others, and the ones that got less time suffered. Specifically Margot and Jocelyn. I feel like by the end of the story I didn't have much of a care about what happened to them because we didn't get a lot of them to begin with. I really enjoyed Roxy's story, and honestly would have loved more of just her. I found Allie and Tunde's stories interesting, but not always engaging. Roxy by far was my favorite character to follow.

The writing was a bit hit or miss for me. At moments I was engaged in the story. The dialogue is really well done and the characters each had their own voice. Which is sometimes hard to do when you have so many character point of views. So that was great. However, there are definitely moments when I felt like I just didn't want to continue. This was the kind of book that as I was reading it (besides a chunk in the late middle area of the story) I was enjoying the story. But once I put it down I had to force myself to pick it back up. Which got difficult because I let myself get distracted with other things when I should have been reading.

The plot definitely had a lot of potential and the whole theme about power imbalances was one I think was done extremely well. At first the thought of women getting all this power is really exciting as a woman to read. But then as the story keeps going, as a reader you almost feel guilty for being so excited at the thought of women gaining all this power because of the abuse of power that happens. It's really interesting and I know for sure I would have loved to discuss this book in college in a Women and Gender Studies class or something. However, the plot sometimes got a bit heavy on the political side, and although I expected it with a book like this one, it got a bit boring or confusing and I found myself skimming some areas. As someone who prefers more character driven plots, I would have enjoyed more character development. The story started off really strong for me. And then there's a chunk in the lower middle area where I felt myself having to push through. I even almost DNFed it at one point. But then you get to a part where things pick up and stay exciting until the end. I really like the way the powers are handled in this version of our world. The way it's kind of hidden for a while, the way the men react to it (and the online forums), and the way the government goes about figuring out what to do with young girls and even the older woman who develop the electricity powers. I felt like it was realistic the way each year gradually gets more and more dystopian. It felt natural and plausible for how it would go down in real life.

I think that this book is worth the read and I understand why it won the Baileys Women's Prize for fiction. It is an incredibly thought provoking read and one that I think I would have loved more if I had a group of people to discuss it with. That was one of my favorite parts about classes in college. I hope this book is being using in classrooms because it's an important one. The rape and violence in this book is graphic, and although I understand why it was used and the message it was portraying, it was hard to read.One question that I am not sure is answered (if it was, I probably missed it during the areas I ended up skimming) but I wondered what happened with people who were non-binary, trans, or genderfluid. Women are given this power, but was it only women who were biologically female? What about women who had any sex changing operations? If I ended up skimming an explanation of this and you have read the book please tell me in the comments below.

I definitely recommend this book, but I think knowing that it can get slow at times and a bit heavy politically is helpful information before diving into the book. Of course, if the content warning I have put in bold at the top of this review are topics that can be triggering for you be careful when reading this book. The messages in this book of this book are so important and I hope to read more books similar to The Power in the future.

The basic premise is much like Flatland:

4. Concerning the Women.

IF OUR highly pointed Triangles of the Soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a Soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.
But here, perhaps, some of my younger Readers may ask how a woman in Flatland can make herself invisible. This ought, I think, to be apparent without any explanation. However, a few words will make it clear to the most unreflecting.

Place a needle on a table. Then, with your eye on the level of the table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole length of it; but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point, it has become practically invisible. Just so is it with one of our Women. When her side is turned towards us, we see her as a straight line; when the end containing her eye or mouth - for with us these two organs are identical - is the part that meets our eye, then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point; but when the back is presented to our view, then - being only sub-lustrous, and, indeed, almost as dim as an inanimate object - her hinder extremity serves her as a kind of Invisible Cap.

The dangers to which we are exposed from our Women must now be manifest to the meanest capacity in Spaceland. If even the angle of a respectable Triangle in the middle class is not without its dangers; if to run against a Working Man involves a gash; if collision with an officer of the military class necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertex of a Private Soldier brings with it danger of death; - what can it be to run against a Woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point, how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious, always to avoid collision!

Many are the enactments made at different times in the different States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril; and in the Southern and less temperate climates where the force of gravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to casual and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning Women are naturally much more stringent. But a general view of the Code may be obtained from the following summary: -

Every house shall have one entrance in the Eastern side, for the use of Females only; by which all females shall enter "in a becoming and respectful manner"3 and not by the Men's or Western door.
No Female shall walk in any public place without continually keeping up her Peace-cry, under penalty of death.
Any Female, duly certified to be suffering from St. Vitus's Dance, fits, chronic cold accompanied by violent sneezing, or any disease necessitating involuntary motions, shall be instantly destroyed .

This book is poorly written, repetitive, and not at all as interested as I expected given its award winning and rave reviews. After sixty some odd pages of reading about the lightening bolt phenomenon coming out of the hands of several of the poorly developed characters, and a few gratuitous and also badly written sex scenes, I decided that while this concept may make for a decent screen play and TV series, the book is total shit. I put it down and will never pick up again. I already want my few hours back.

“The Power” might be described as dystopian by some and might be (and in fact has been) described as a fantasy or a wish by others. I think most readers would agree that it is a wild ride.

In The Power, women suddenly discover that they have electrical current running through their bodies that they can use for endless purposes. Most of the women who discover that they have the power are actually girls. These girls are able to pass the power on to their mothers. As time goes by, the power is used, of course, to take over the world from men.

The story focuses on 4 individuals, with asides focused on others. Roxy learns that she has the power when she is 14 years old and inadvertently uses it to some effect during a home invasion. Roxy, the daughter of a known gangster, learns to maximize the power with age and becomes a formidable soldier in the effort to take control from men. She has three half-brothers, all of whom continue their father’s business, one of whom is especially envious of Roxy’s power.

Allie is an abused foster child who has been playing with her power and at the age of 16 uses it to punish her abusive foster father. As a result, Allie has to escape and takes refuge in a convent, where more “orphaned” girls with the power also take refuge. Allie, who hears voices that guide her, uses the power to cure infirmities, renames herself Eve and ultimately becomes known as Mother Eve. Allie meets Roxy at the convent and they create a powerful friendship.

Tunde, a man from Lagos, discovers women with the power when he is 21, during a mildly disastrous romantic endeavor. He decides to film women with the power as he sees it and ultimately travels the world reporting on the impact of the power. His reporting takes him to Riyadh where women who have never been able to drive are rioting and destroying cars with their power. “He knows then that this thing is going to take the world and everything will be different…”

Margot, is a local mayor whose daughter, Jocelyn has intermittent power. Despite Jocelyn’s issues with the power, she is able to transfer it to Jocelyn who goes on to become a governor, a senator and possibly more.

The story is told as a historical record during a time when women have ruled the world for centuries and men and their rights are restricted. The book has lots of violence, sex, drugs and rock and roll and ultimately of course, power corrupts regardless of gender. There are good and bad! The author of the history is a man and he is corresponding with an author and friend named Naomi for advice and constructive criticism. In her last letter, she suggests to him that “I know this might be very distasteful to you, but have you considered publishing this book under a woman’s name”? I loved this book and you will too! It is a lot of fun.

"Roxy feels the thing like pins and needles along her arms. Like needle-pricks of light from her spine to her collarbone, from her throat to her elbows, wrists, to the pads of her fingers. She's glittering, inside."

"Margot waits to see Jos do something; hold her breath, or wrinkle her brow, or show exertion in the muscles of her arm, but there's nothing. Only the pain."

The Power by Naomi Alderman is one of those books that people are going to be talking about and analyzing decades from now. As I read, I was struck almost immediately by how clearly, how perfectly, The Power fit into a very short list of culturally relevant, beautifully written, "social criticism as dystopian fiction" works. This is this decade's answer to The Handmaid's Tale and Never Let Me Go, and carries as much meaning, as much depth of social awareness, as much horror, and as much lovingly created characters as Atwood's and Ishiguro's genre-defining works.

I was surprised by the perspective in this book, which is set up in the prologue and which became a lens that colored my interpretation of events - particularly as I questioned how reliably I could trust the narration. This is absolutely a book that is open for interpretation, and deserves to be analyzed in book clubs and classrooms for at least the next century. To begin establishing setting/context for The Power, an author and his publisher exchange letters back and forth, discussing the manuscript (which is, of course, The Power). Of it, the author says:

"I've seen audience's eyes go blank as I try to explain my research. So what I've done here is a story of hybrid piece, something that I hope will appeal more to ordinary people. Not quite history, not quite a novel. A sort of "novelization" of what archeologists agree is the most plausible narrative."
This, then, is the lens through which we should read The Power.

As a story, it follows four POV characters across the world and through time, from before the event through years of political and social upheaval to, well, a conclusion - of sorts. These are real people, whose feelings and experiences are believable, understandable, and moving, even as they're otherworldly and at times surreal. This, I believe, is Alderman's superpower as an author. She writes these characters so skillfully that their experiences become our experiences, and we live in The Power's changing world through these glimpses into their lives.

That is not to say that this was an easy book to read. Not by a long shot.

Personally, I find the assumption that women would rule the world as violently and irresponsibly as men have to be reductive and insulting to humanity in general, but The Power sidesteps almost all of that through sheer force of artistry. Still, it's there, both in the way the world deals with "the event" and in male and female actions and reactions. It rears its head for the first time at the end of the prologue, and more than once I had to remind myself of the layers of intentional perspective you have to read this book through. Alderman wields perspective like a deadly weapon, and cleaved my calm in two.

Also, it has to be noted just how much of a factor it is that I was reading this book at this time in this place. As a white woman living in America in the time of Trump, I'm already overburdened by outrage and a yearning for feminist power. When (in the book) teen girls feel The Power coursing through their veins and urging them to strike, I feel it too. And when I read news stories of yet another powerful man and his history of (unpunished) abuse toward women, or I'm reminded of all the abuses I and my female friends and family have suffered, I cannot help but think of The Power. And I understand how tempting it would be to use it to burn everything down - to remake the world.

The Power, by Katie Burton, has a relatively simple concept at its core: what would the world be like if women were suddenly more physically dominant/dangerous than men? The exploration of this concept is anything but simple, though, leading to a mostly compelling read.

The vehicle for the sudden societal upheaval is a newly-discovered/awakened organ (called “the skein”) in women that creates electrical power, akin to an electric eel. At first it manifests itself only in teen girls, but soon it’s discovered that they can “awaken” the power in older women as well. Power levels and depth of control vary on an individual basis — some women can call it up at will, others find it more frustratingly slippery; some can cause pain, other can kill.

Burton uses shifting POVs to take us chronologically from the power’s arrival over the span of about a decade (with a larger time span covered by a narrative frame). The POVs include:
• Allie: A teen girl who hears a voice in her head who guides her in using the power to escape an abusive foster home become “Mother Eve”—leader of a new religious movement focuses on women

• Roxy: the rough-and-tough daughter of an English crime boss and whose power is unusually strong

• Margot: a mayor who uses both her own power and the social chaos to climb up in the world and to protect her daughter, whose own ability is scattershot

• Tunde: the one male POV, Tunde is a young Nigerian journalist (in the modern form of the word) who risks his life multiple times to report on how the power is roiling the world

The varied POVs allows Burton to potentially present the impact of the power across a spectrum: race, class, geography. In one scene we might be listening in on a meeting of Western power brokers (governors, media elites), in another marching with a group of women in Saudi Arabia, in another mingling at a part in the newly-formed women’s country of Bessapara. Burton does a nice job of zooming in and out—showing us the power’s impact on both the individual and the global level, the personal and the political.

Chronologically, we watch as characters and institutions/governments first deny the power (an internet hoax), then try to control it via legislation and social stricture even as they try to cure it, then, for some, go to out and out war with it (literal war, not metaphorical war). Gender roles/dynamics shift and often utterly reverse. Now it is boys who have to be careful about going out alone at night, not it is women soldiers we see performing horrific atrocities, including rape (anyone expecting a female Utopia will be sorely disappointed).

“Concept” novels sometimes suffer in their characters and/or stories. Certainly that isn’t the case with the characters in The Power. Roxy in particular is a vibrant, sharply delineated, and utterly engrossing character. Tunde is a good match, and I found myself incredibly anxious for him on multiple occasions, especially as he was the sole male POV — I was not all sure Burton wouldn’t kill him off (nor will I reveal whether she does nor not). That depth of characterization is even more impressive, given how easy it would have been to make him a simple plot convenience — “Here’s what’s happening in India! Look at what’s going on in Africa!”

It’s good that the characterization is strong, because the concept does only carry so far. Basically, it boils down to the old cliché about power and corruption, and it all happens pretty quickly here, sometimes feeling as if that aspect is put a bit on autopilot. A feeling exacerbated by relatively thin worldbuilding. The first half of the book is slower than the second, and I can see some people complaining it doesn’t “get going” for a while, but in some ways I preferred the first half, where the power’s repercussions are still complex and moving down uncertain paths toward uncertain ends. Past a certain point, one sort of sees where it’s all going, gets the point that nothing happening here hasn’t happened/isn’t happening now with women (i.e. women live in a dystopia today). And while as noted there is the potential for examination of race and class in this dynamic, it really doesn’t get explored in any depth. The frame story, meanwhile, is interesting in some ways, but I felt Burton wrote past her ending, with the end frame being a bit too on the nose.

So the concept is intriguing and thought provoking, but it’s mostly thanks to the sharp characterization and welcome bits of humor that The Power kept me going.

The Power introduces Neil, a male author attempting to publish his work some time in the future, and Naomi, his female boss who has a hard time believing what Neil is trying to sell. And what's that, you might ask? As Neil is from a future where women hold the power, Neil is trying to make a case that at some point, men held all the power. This story is about the origins of female power and the dramatic shift that accompanies it.

Suddenly, female teenagers across the world develop the ability to shock people with their hands. In turn, these girls can awaken the ability in older women. Predictably, this results in chaos for much of the world. Government leaders try to keep the girls in their place and keep them from doing any harm. A new religion springs up, claiming that God is a woman and sent down 'the power' to affect change. Riots occur everywhere. A new country for women springs up. Scared men start to form terrorists groups to try and take back their power.

Like most SF, this book is based on a simple question: what would happen if suddenly women were stronger than men? Terrifyingly, this books answers this question and turns the notion that women are a gentler sex on its head. The phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" comes to mind.

Perhaps my favorite part in the novel is the epilogue. After Naomi has had a chance to review his work, she begins to question his interpretation of history. And that last line was very satisfying!

I think this novel is a must read for any self-proclaimed feminist and I definitely recommend the audiobook!

In a world where women are the dominant gender, what could go wrong? When those women possess a special flame in them with the power to kill, a lot could go wrong.

When the world discovers that young girls have an electric current running inside their bodies, the patriarchy flips upside down. This power enables females to not only cause damage, but to kill those who cross them. Some embrace the power; others hide from it. We follow the journey of Allie, who turns to religion to gain more power and is revered as the goddess “Mother Eve.” Then there’s Margot, turning to politics to rise from mayor to governor and help girls learn to use and control their power. Fierce Roxy, on the other hand, uses her power for vengeance. Our only male perspective is Tunde, a Nigerian journalist who places himself right in the power’s action to document for the rest of the world.

While I loved the premise of the novel, I felt that Alderman did not explore it as deeply as it could have been explored. There seems to be a lot more she could have done here; she does touch upon the religious, political, and social effects of the power, but only skims across the surface of these effects. The varying perspectives of the novel seemed promising at first, but could be a bit confusing at times and were unevenly dispersed. I did enjoy the letters featured in the beginning and end, and thought it very creative how Alderman incorporated herself into the story through these letters. Overall, the idea of the power and a ruling matriarchy was a creative one, but one that could have been executed more effectively.

A really interesting premise - what if the people who have the least power in the world suddenly have the most. A very well written and page turning alternative universe drama. I read it in two days! I liked the characters and the different points of view that encapsulated changes to politics, religion and sexual relations among other 'big' topics. I thought it got too clever in its 'historical novel' idea and 5,000 years later (as if they would still have the same language!?) and the story should have been contained in the immediate few years aftermath and not tried to go beyond that. Nevertheless, a timely and thoughtful novel that is has right on the mark commentary about our current society. Recommended.

4.5 stars. Wow. The book grabs you from the start and doesn't let go. With the fascinating SF premise of women developing an electrostatic power that acts to, in a few short years, utterly reverse the physical power balance between males and females, Alderman has a gripping way to explore society, culture, gender, sex, violence, politics, and the like. The book works equally well as an SF story and as a deeper discussion of important issues, it is both smart and engrossing. Highly recommended.

This is a thought-provoking book that explores the question - what would happen if teenaged girls suddenly had the power to electrocute others and the ability to activate this power in adult women? What would be the immediate impacts? How might those impacts and governmental and personal reactions to them differ across cultures? What happens over time? Would females dominate males or coexist as equals? How would this new power impact the big religions?

Don't look too closely at the dodgy explanation for how this ability has appeared; just accept it. Furthermore, it also isn't clear to me, if the official explanation even covers one dangling thread.

Each chapter explores what is happening in the world through a particular character's experience and perception. There are several characters rather than one main one, but I found it easy to keep them separate in my mind.

I guess it just came out okay for me. Maybe it was weird time in my life. A transition period where my mind was flying 1000 different ways at once with ageing friends facing chronic illness, biotoxins, chronic pain or autoimmune disorders. Or maybe, like my break-up excuses, it really wasn't me but the fault of the book (ie girlfriend) and I'm just trying to soften the blow on the author because I don't want to hurt their feelings and certainly don't want, as a constant reader them to ever, ever, ever stop writing. I don't know. It's a tough call but Obama liked this one I'll take his word since he and I were about the only two people I knew who didn't believe Colin Powell's fear tactics on weaponized media that included NBC, Fox News and NPR with the nightly sound bite, "What if the next terror attack is a mushroom cloud in New York City?" So I'm going to say it really was me baby, and this book was awesome.

It’s a story that will stay for you for a long time; it’s been two weeks since I finished it and I’m still having difficulties putting my thoughts together somewhat coherently. I don’t want to go too much into details to avoid possible spoilers, but the message behind The Power (please forgive the pun!) is just that: POWERFUL. It’s a truly unique and clever example of speculative and science fiction at its best and the story will most likely surprise you. The prose is strong and the plot and plot twists are interesting enough, although the general idea behind this book is by far its strongest feature. Because while the characters might not be that memorable after a few weeks, I’m sure you won’t forget about the essence and underlying message of The Power for a long time. I know I didn’t! This book can lead to some interesting discussions, and I’m personally really curious about how male readers would interprete its message. Recommended!

I had not read much about this book when I picked it up. It took me quite a few pages to get really into it and then it made me think. I finished reading it a week ago and I am still thinking about it. In particular it reminds me of that old adage “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. What would I do in such a situation? We all think we are good people, would we stay good if we had nothing to fear? I thought it was a very timely book, especially with all the news about abuse of power by some rich/powerful man
Aside from current topics it talks about mothers and daughters and how as much as we love someone the decisions we think will help, might hinder in the long run. The things we do to find acceptance in our own family. Keeping our purpose our morality when everything around us is becoming unglued. Themes that will appeal to all of us, no matter our gender or financial rung.
Overall, I enjoyed it ad I am glad I read it.

Beautifully written and one of the saddest books I've read in years. A very affecting tale of absolute power corrupting absolutely. The author posits that if women suddenly became powerful they would become despots and bullies, and eventually rewrite history to support their vision of social order. This alternate dystopia is a dark vision indeed. Given the treatment of women in our world, the seeking of revenge and redress by women in the story is not unexpected.

The inability of anyone in the book to envision a different response than keeping the same old bad system with the newly powerful in charge made me very sad. As with Margaret Atwood, this is a powerful warning to us to take a good look at our world culture and where it is headed.

I really love the idea of this book so I got the Audible version for a road trip. Five hours in I had to quit. The characters are shallow and virtually interchangeable and I quite literally couldn't any less about them. I was bored, I quickly tired of their droning monologues. I just couldn't be bothered to finish this garbage. So promising, so disappointing. I'm so glad Audible will allow returns on audiobooks. This one is going back. I should have heeded the warnings of the bad reviews.

I loved reading Naomi Alderman’s novel, The Power, for three reasons. First, she draws readers into a creative and engaging story. Second, her prose is finely written. Third, she explores a fundamental question about human nature and behavior: if women had a physical trait that provided them with the means to dominate men, what might be different in human relations? It was especially timely to read this novel when each day’s news provides a report about another prominent male exercising power through some form of inappropriate behavior. Any book club that skips this title will lose an opportunity to discuss gender similarities and differences.

Rating: Five-star (I love it)

The writing is excellent, but my fundamental issue with The Power is that it’s focused on the “how”, not the “why”. The entirety of the book is about the transitionary period between the current patriarchal power structures established in the world (ranging from the heavy-handed Saudi Arabia to somewhat more progressive countries like the US and UK) to the New World Order. Most feminist fiction and gender swap stories depicting Matriarchal societies tend to hand wave this period - or, at best, do a very poor job of it. What the author fails to show in this book is what they actually DO with this power, once the new regime is secure.

What makes it even worse is that we’re told the story through the eyes of a very suspect cast of four different characters. Two of them – women – are already so emotionally (and physically) battered and abused that it’s little wonder they think only of vengeance and destruction when given power. The third female MC is a minor politician who appears to be power hungry at the outset, is divorced, and has no real love for any males in her life. Here again, is a poor eyepiece to examine the “what if” power gain scenario we’re presented with. There are some scenes in the early days, just after she receives her power, that she’s almost mad with it, destroying public property with glee and complete abandon like some angsty teen smashing pumpkins just prior to Halloween. It just didn’t feel realistic. In stories like this, realistic characters are the very bedrock upon which the tale has to be told. What would *real* people do with a power like this?

The male character also seemed deviant to me. In the face of his experiences in the early days, he faces destruction, rage, and unchecked abuse of power that would make *any* male shy away, but he does the opposite. Again, I felt dismissive of his character because I just couldn’t believe his reactions were realistic.

There were no delicate flowers, no peace lovers, no women deeply in love with men to showcase the "what if" scenario. These are the cases I want to see. What would a reasonable women actually do with such control? I didn't see any of that here. Just a lot of power hungry women looking to make ALL men pay for the sins of the few that have hurt them.

These issues were further compounded by the fact that women have been essentially turned into some form of demi-gods, or at worst, super heroes. Reading the book description, I expected the women to develop some form of mild stunning power that not only gave them a solid defense against male predators, but even a form of power that they could abuse. Instead, the author has cranked the power “to 11”, and we’re witnessing lightning bolts thrown indiscriminately at cars, controlling their circuitry and somehow making them rev into oblivion and melt down into a slag of molten metal and parts, exploding violently (the author clearly doesn’t know the first thing about cars or electronics). We see women reading minds, controlling thoughts, controlling muscle movements of others, even living on in the face of missing critical organs.

With these kinds of powers, uh, yeah, men are always going to be the dirt under their feet. To be their pets, and unworthy of consideration or respect. Frankly, given the powers these women have, the author really hasn’t thought this through quite enough in how much society (and technology) would change. But this is not good speculative feminist fiction. A proper gender swap story is powerful because it gives you a mirror to look into and see what the other side deals with in a more intimate fashion. But in order for the mirror to be unclouded, the disparities modeled must be crafted with great care. Men do have power over women in our society, but it is much more subtle than is created in the book’s reverse.

Overall, this is an interesting book, but not a particularly compelling look at what a power shift would really mean for humanity. When the fundamentals are flawed, any conclusions drawn are going to be equally as flawed.

Best book I’ve read in twenty years. This is brilliant, clever, witty stuff! Honestly, if they don’t start publishing a two book set of Handmaid’s Tale/The Power, they’ll have really dropped the ball on this one. What a story!!! I couldn’t put it down. And the way she flipped the script, in terms of gender, all the way down to the smallest historical/sociological detail...I mean, even down to that thing we (as women) always do with the obsequious, apologetic tone of the letters bookending the story...just perfection. There couldn’t BE a better time to read this book than right now, during this #MeToo movement, when we’re all witnessing a minor miracle of a tiny bit of actual justice. Just brilliant. Two thumbs up. All the stars. My highest recommendation. Read this now!

Ok, listen: you need to read this book. It’s epic. And genius in its intricacies. It’s so, so clever, and Alderman does a phenomenal job of dissecting the concept of gender as power. I’ve heard it classified as feminist science fiction and dystopia, and I’d say that’s all true.

That’s pretty much all that I’m going to say. I won’t even mention my favorite characters because I want you to go into it with an open mind. I read it as a buddy read and was so engrossed in the story every time I picked it up, that I had to actively force myself to insert my bookmark and set it down when I finished each section so I wouldn’t read ahead. We had some awesome discussions; there is so much to talk about in these pages. Read it. Then find someone else who’s read it so you can talk about all the things.

The premise of this book is one that has a lot of promise. Due to the poor writing however, it fails to deliver. The book is in desperate need of editing, there are too many unnecessary details that don’t add anything to the story or the characters. I’m struggling to overcome my lifelong mentality of absolutely having to finish a book that I start. After all, there are so many wonderful books out there to be read. However I still haven’t been able to conquer that mentality and even though I could tell early on that the book was not living up to the hype, I continued with it. In hindsight, a regrettable decision.

This book is masterful. I truly enjoyed the set up, the premise of the multi character view points and felt - despite the unlikely possibility of women gaining super powers - that the author made the idea come alive in a very dark way. I think she ended it well and with some unexpected twists. Not necessarily a happy ending, women can be brutal and terrible too, maybe human nature with any physical advantage is dangerous.

Also, I like this quote from the Author, “... in my world, nothing happens to a man that is not happening to a woman in the world we live in today. So if we find my world to be a dystopia, then we are already living in a dystopia.”

I gave this book 3.5 Stars but rounded down because it was closer to a 3 than 4.

I was initially so enthralled by this book, I prematurely recommended it to several people. I love the idea of this book and the first 3/4 was…fantastic. I could see this story going so many amazing places and I appreciated the introspection it was meant to create. I wanted so much from this book.

However, the end left so much to be desired that I legitimately feel ripped off of the time I spent reading this book. For me personally, the ending was a train wreck of disappointment and mediocre wrap up. I can hardly form the words to describe the way that I feel immediately after finishing it.

I have the Audible version and it is such a slog -- unpleasant characters, implausible plot points, etc. -- that I may give up. The only main character I am rooting for is the male reporter! Some of the audiobook performer's accents/characters work well but some are just bad and annoying. I agree with other reviewers who note that story is awash in women using their new found power to brutally torture men and sometimes each other. Promising premise, poorly executed.

What would happen if women developed the ability to generate electricity from their fingertips?

An intriguing premise backed with a mostly likable cast that just completely falls apart about halfway through the book. What started out as a thoughtful exploration of the Power and its effect on the characters devolves into absurd provocateur nonsense. Characters disappear with no resolution. Story lines get set up and then fizzle away. Events take place that have no real basis in anything that came before in the book or the real world.

I'm glad I read it, but I was left feeling more frustrated than intrigued.

This book has probably drawn a lot of criticism, and I think some of it is warranted. I raised my eyebrow in a few places. Even so, this is a brilliant way to imagine a world where women are stronger than men, and therefore assume all the power in society.

I've been wanting a book like this for a while, that explores the reasons behind power dynamics. And if someone writes another good one, I'll read it, too.

A worthy successor to “The Handmaid’s Tale”, this is an absorbing, thrilling, horrific, thought-provoking work of speculative fiction. Not for the faint of heart; while beautifully written with a sly vein of dark sarcasm, the violence is extremely graphic (though it is, of course, a fairly accurate reversal of what women live with today). But at its heart, as the title states, this novel is about the effect of an extreme power imbalance (whether by gender, racial, or any other construct), and how it influences and corrupts the way we interpret history and view our present circumstances. We can’t escape human nature.

This globe-spanning novel about young women developing deadly electrical powers that ultimately rattle the established world order asks some sharp questions about gender, culture, and violence. It's one part apocalyptic thriller a la Stephen King's The Stand, and one part semi-satirical critique of our own patriarchal society. The irony can get a bit heavy-handed at times, like when future historians are shown mocking the idea that men could have ever been soldiers, but the overall story is effective and engaging.

[Trigger warning for rape and genital mutilation.]

This book is fantastic!
Now let me just say it’s fictional and some points are overdramatized but most men don’t realize some situations in these book are just plain true.
It’s sexism and the power imbalance turned on it’s head women are all of a sudden in charge, they’ve got the ability to control electricity and the whole world is changing.
My favorite character is probably Margo she is the perfect symbolism of Donald Trump almost. She changed as the novel progressed and it was a slow progression but she changed and all of a sudden when she’s set to lose and the world knows it she wins. It’s the same situation most women found themselves in last November. We knew we had won and it was ripped from us by someone yelling I’m stronger and have a better temperament than all the women ever. Her story is so American, the war profiteering, the pushing for America while killing its citizens. It’s was fantastic.
Mother Eve though... she was the corrupt church and her story made so much sense to me. Living in the south where this broke out like a heat wave we like to have something to believe in outside of ourselves. I’m a Christian and I could see how she manipulated and then used it to break the law. I could see how she had to fight a holy war and I hated it because I’d like to think women would be better than that but I know better. As someone who still gets told the man of the head of the house by my dad pretty regularly and preached at for some liberal beliefs I understand how ingrained religion is and I also understand how long it would take to make a change.
Roxy, the Londoner, the solider by the end she was so changed but still wholly herself that I wanted to know where she went from the end. She obviously objected on some fronts because she fought against unnecessary deaths. She also mostly kept to the status quo because she left the men in her life in charge. It’s women like her that I understand how it took 10+ years to make major changes.
Bessapara, I guess that’s how it’s spelled, the country where women took over! Now here’s where men will yell they went too far without realizing some things that happen still happen to women now. Some countries don’t allow women to drive, to go out in public without a chaperone, to go in some public places because men will be in there. When women say how wrong hat is we are told it’s their culture but does that make it right? Women have been stoned for being raped, have been forced to marry their rapist, have been murdered for a mans actions against her. China allowed female children to be aborted until the 80s I think, maybe the 90s. We have had to put ourselves through insane beauty standards the whole story is based a patriarchal society all of a sudden changing.
It’s turned the tables where men have to learn to protect themselves and they have to have women protectors. There was a rape but he was automatically believed, it wasn’t until after he was avenged that she questioned the truth too the story. She believed the victim which women have to fight and beg for now. It was a really good reading experience in a society men are calling a witch hunt for sexual offenders right now.
There was one male MC who ended up coming to terms with the new reality and his vulnerabilities as time progressed. Tunde was a journalist who went into female centered areas sometimes against his own safety. He felt invincible until he wasn’t and his later story really showed how society had changed but you could make your way with the right kind of friends. Also he faces professional sexism in a way most men never will but tons of women have! Mary Shelley’s husband tried to claim he wrote Frankenstein and the list goes on and on and on of women who’s work has been stolen. It’s fascinating so many small subtle things were added that men probably won’t notice but hit women in the face with their every day life.
The one thing I didn’t like was the fact poc aren’t really discussed. How did this effect the black community with the police brutality claims happening. How did this effect the Latin American community where that is so male focused? It would have been nice to have side bars answering some of those questions but it’s still delicious on its own.
It was filled with subtle reality changes that I can’t continue to dig into or I’d give the entire novel away but I highly recommend it for men and women. I will say it’s been my favorite to listen too on audio probably ever and I’m so glad I picked it up. I’m going to get the hard copy as soon as possible too cause a book this gorgeous I just can’t not own.

2.5 rounding up to a 3 because I can't deny that the writing is good. However, I have to admit I was massively underwhelmed by this book after everything I'd heard about it. I can vaguely figure out what point the author was trying to make—did it need to be made? Don't know. The heavy religious undertones seem out of place in amongst the other stories and altogether it feels disjointed and the ideas half-baked at best. Possibly just a case of interesting idea, poor execution; maybe would have needed more in-depth exploration and a longer text but, that said, I nearly gave up halfway through so I don't know that I could have read another 100 pages.

The Power is a highly ambitious novel, let down somewhat by a North American focus and a drift away from the depth of characterisation in the first half.

The Power is however a work of real importance. Women's role in the world is changing, slowly, and any work that shines an oblique light on female genital mutilation and female infanticide, as currently practiced in countries with populations accounting for about half of the world's population is welcome. #MeToo won't go there, but maybe some day it might.

However, as with other novels in this genre, The Power ducks the waning role of North America in world affairs.

The clash of civilisations underway these past thirty years may favor US military reach, but the exploitation of women as baby factories is leading to massive leaps in the population of Islamic countries and the entrenchment of male power in Indian and other Eastern societies with unpredictable consequences.

To imagine that a Mother Eve, a new female savior, will come from the United States, reflects a North American sensibility, which is unlikely to come true.

As a rallying cry for women in the West, The Power may however help to jar the consciousness of some who are open to such things, but the global forces of Islamic, Indian and Chinese patriarchies are, at the present rate, more likely to dominate our daughter's lives than a genetic miracle

I agree with other reviewers that the first half of the novel is more engaging too, but perhaps that is due to the desire of the author to enlarge the scope of the work. But I do commend The Power to you for its imagination and the compelling nature of the narrative.

This novel is an important part of the feminist struggle to emancipate women, a journey still only beginning.

It is a fist raised from a sea of dead and abused women's bodies, not a wave for help.

Read it and imagine what it actually might take to change the deadly, blood-curdling abuse of women occurring today and every day all over the world.

Part anthropology, part sci-fi, part noir, and all-around great read. The writing is taut and witty, brutal when it needs to be, sensuous and tender at times, heartbreaking, terrifying, occasionally even funny. Intensely sympathetic characters highlight facets of this possible world, as do the ephemera and “primary” sources (many of which are strikingly digital and up to date), creating a richly engaging sense of reality. Polished and accomplished storytelling here; the message and the writing are perfectly in pace, tied up with a postmodern twist. Challenging philosophically and highly recommended.

This book had been on my list for some time as the reviews were quite good. While the concept is new, it takes all the worst parts of historical treatment of women throughout time and spins them onto men. It’s intriguing to see how shocking it feels to read about a country that changes its laws so that men are required to have papers with a female guardian listed in order to do anything, when that very thing is currently happening in Saudi Arabia. Overall, though the book was too graphic for me. The scenes are violent and disturbing. Additionally, the writing isn’t my favorite. I didn’t feel captivated by the book until I was about 75% finished, and the chapters switch between 4-5 different characters narrating the book. Additionally, there are jumps in time and character perspectives that don’t feel clearly outlined. Overall, the book was given 2 stars for the introduction of a new theme, but apart from that I will not be reading this again or recommending it to anyone.

In this fantasy, young teenage girls all over today’s world discover that they can emit electrical shocks, varying in intensity from mild to fatal, to other people. Initially they use it defensively, when fighting with boys (and occasionally with girls) in the playground, or when young or older men try to molest then. They can teach older women how to use that power. It has a huge impact when the oppressed women of Saudi Arabia use it. In Moldova, the world centre of human sex-trafficking, the sex-slaves revolt and take over swathes of the country. It is governed by a woman president (who has almost certainly killed her husband, who had been president before her). Occasionally a group of poor exploited women, like those sheltering under motorway bridges in Delhi, become indiscriminate killers of men. Roxy, one of the three main female characters and the daughter and heir of a gangster, uses the Power for vengeance. She also takes over her father’s shady and profitable activities in Moldova. Something terrible happens to her.

A cult begins exalting God the Mother, and another of the main female characters, Ally, known as Mother Eve, becomes a kind of High Priestess to the increasing number of women in a convent on the coast of South Carolina. Her movement spreads across the world. She can cure certain physical ailments by electrical stimulation, and this increases her following. She is a force of moderation: the women who follow her use the Power only in self-defence, for example against the police who try to close down the convent.

Some men react by military training in Moldova; others form a terrorist group called Male Power. A character called UrbanDox proclaims an all-out gender war because, he says, the women want to kill all the men.

Mother Eve is persuaded to encourage her followers to retaliate in kind: she is no longer a force of moderation – indeed, quite the reverse in due course.

The President of Moldova, who has become an unstable tyrant, tries to get her to acquiesce in the measures she plans against rebellious men in that country. She issues a series of decrees by which men in Moldova are subject, on pains of capital punishment, to rules and restrictions even more extreme than those that had controlled women in Saudi Arabia.

Towards the end, there are scenes of the most grotesque cruelties that women inflict on men. Alderman wants to make the point that violence lurks in women as well as in men; but, cruelly as men sometimes behave towards women, I really think that Alderman exaggerated when she said in an interview that “nothing happens to a man in the book that hasn't happened to a woman."

It is a tense story, basically with a good idea; and the first half is much better than the second. But there are considerable stretches of longueur between dramatic scenes. The plotting is rather disjointed; in parts (and increasingly so as the book progresses) I found it quite obscure; towards the end even incomprehensible. Most of the characters are two-dimensional. In these and other respects, like in its prolific use of sexual swearwords, the book is very different from (and, in my opinion, greatly inferior to) the lucidity and elegance of her earlier works (“Disobedience”, “The Lessons”, “The Liar’s Gospel” – see my the store reviews). Though it is obviously a book which addresses the gender issue, I am truly astonished that such a badly written book should have won the Baileys Prize for women’s fiction.

This book posits that at the basic level power is power no matter who wields it and the powerful will oppress the weak. I don’t know if that is a relief of an idea or something to be miserably sad about. We like to think that if we had a matriarchal society, rather than a patriarchal, there would be peace and love and nurturing. But would there really? I enjoyed this book a lot but felt there was a lot more I wanted to know in the end. We read this for our book club and it made for a very lively discussion over margaritas!

The concept is so enticing that it will attract the readers of all kinds. But once you get past the premise, it is a dull book. The characters are one dimensional and there is no depth to them. The writing is quite average at best and does very little to keep the reader engaged. The plot is mediocre and it never reaches the boiling that is expected from similar books with a premise with such potential.

I was dredging myself to sift past the last third of the book and hope that the next page concludes it.

Could have been better.

Maybe I missed something with this book. So many “Book of the year” awards and I could barely get through it. It was almost a DNF which is incredibly rare for me. It felt like the middle 100 pages or so were basically the same sort of thing, slogging through accounts to build up to a somewhat predictable end. I almost prefer the sequel or if the book had jumped around in time. I can’t really recommend this one, but certainly it gets points for its premise.

Generally I liked this book and enjoyed reading it. Its interesting to be exposed to role reversal sexist imagery. It becomes so much more visible when it's not the normalized role. However, as others have said, the complete inability for humanity to keep it together is a bit far fetched. It reminded me of Walking Dead in that the enemy is not the zombies or, in this case the power flip, but the fact that apparently all humans are just really really awful.

This book moved me, invaded me, stayed with me for weeks. I read it on vacation abroad, and at the same time read Salma Hayek's OpEd in the NYT. The resulting cocktail was too strong, even for me: two nights in a row I had nightmares. "The Power," indeed. I'm in agreement with many other reviewers here who say they won't look at gender and power in the same way ever again. Since then, I've gone on to read "Disobedience" and "The Liars Gospel." Naomi Alderman is a gifted writer, and I'm so grateful for her work.

I loved this book! I think it really showed the atrocities that women have been forced to go through and what might potentially happen if they (women) gained an incredible power: crazy religions, incel men freaking out and getting crazy over the changes, rise of women-led governments, and the power driving some women insane to the point of them torturing men.

The parts with various "artifacts" and the letters at the end were also very well done tongue-in-cheek scenes. I felt it really shoved the whole message home.

The Power is a clever novel, recording through multiple narratives, the way in which the balance of power between the sexes became reversed. In the book, young girls suddenly develop the ability to create electricity through the palms of their hands. Suddenly the dynamic between men and women in the world has changed. Men have always had strength on their side, but with this newfound power, women become more respected and feared for their strength. While some use this power to counter injustices in the world (sex trafficking, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia etc), others seem to use their ability to inflict terror on men. While the concept of the novel is very interesting, and the story grips you in it’s beginnings, it loses momentum quickly 1/4 is the way in. I felt like the story tried to cover too great of a time span in too many locations in the world, which did a disservice to the development of characters and the interesting concepts the author introduced. It just felt like a much larger story that had been watered down.

I tried so hard to finish the book, but I just couldn't do it. It's not a good novel. Neither fun to read nor intellectually stimulating. The blatant references to social issues are not even thought-provoking. Just because it mirrors the current social issues in the novel doesn't make it a good novel.

Great novels do it in a subtle way. But, the first and the foremost character of a great novel is an interesting story, which this novel lacks.

Wow. What an eerie and incredible book. I never read this kind of story, but I was blown away. There were a few places in the middle where I wasn't sure where the book was headed and thought about stopping. I am so glad I finished reading to the end. Alderman builds a world where the power balance between men and women has reversed itself. This imagined world (a dystopia, especially for men) is brutal and powerful and so timely. I can't think of a better book to read in 2018 (and every year after).

With women the dominant sex, would the world be any different? The conclusion here seems to be no. The one sex, men here, would still be subordinate, rivalry and war would still exist, and people would wonder, as does a character in this novel, if the world would be a better place if men were in charge. More interesting, unfortunately, is the structure of the fully formed new society than the race up to its birth, the subject of the novel.

In Naomi Adlerman’s 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize winning dystopian novel, a male writer named Neil solicits the opinion of the eponymous Naomi regarding his new work looking back five thousands years to the origin of the rise of women as the world’s dominant sex. He begins his telling ten years prior to the war that places women firmly in control. Neil focuses on four characters:

Roxy is the daughter of a ruthless British criminal gang leader, Bernie Monke, who eventually assumes control of the gang, putting her in direct rivalry with her treacherous father and a brother, Darrell. Allie is a disaffected American orphan shunted from foster home to foster home; she hears a voice (too glib by a measure) which guides her to become Mother Eve, the leader of a world-changing religious movement. Margot, a cunning and ambitious American politician, rises from city mayor to U.S. Senator to play a role in the great conflict that changes the world. Tunde is a Nigerian youth with journalistic ambitions, who becomes the first-hand chronicler of the revolution that sweeps the world. Included are an assortment of other characters, the most significant of whom is Tatiana Moskalev, head of a state, Bessapara, that breaks away from Moldova (sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania), which is reduced to the menacing North Moldova; these countries become the flashpoint for the world-altering gender switch.

The change begins with young girls; Roxy and Allie are both teens. They develop a muscular skein at the base of their necks that allows them to deliver an electrical charge of varying magnitude, ranging from titillating pleasure to deadly force, The Power. Naturally, the world, that is men, view this with alarm and try to analyze its origin with an eye to negating it. The teens gain control over their power and in time transfer it to older women. As women begin to understand their power, the world undergoes a violent change that begins in the most repressive parts of the world, the Middle East and India. As this starts happening, Allie escapes the clutches of her foster family, fleeing to a convent on the eastern coast of the U.S. There, with the help of the voice in her head, she establishes herself as Mother Eve, the spiritual leader of the great transformation. Roxy, by virtue of her power and criminal skill, assumes the leadership of the Monke gang, specializing in, among other things, drug running. Eventually, all these characters end up in Bessapara. Bessapara and North Moldova become the poxy states for the worldwide change.

The Power is a mix of speculative fiction, adventure, religious legerdemain, and war. Often it feels like a YA novel, mostly in tone and the superficial manner in which it treats what could be a more thoughtful exploration of gender roles and suppression. However, because it is filled with violence against both men and women perpetrated against each other, much of it sexual, it is not something the very young or sensitive would find comfortable reading. While the idea does intrigue, perhaps it would have worked better with more focus on the fully formed society of the future rather than the machinations leading up to its birth, more in line with Margaret Atwood’s (a supporter of this novel) masterful creation of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale.

I am enjoying the book. It's a thought-provoking exercise in the effect of power. However, I am listening to the Audible version and find the narrator's change into different accents distracting. Especially because she is British and most of the action and main characters are American, so much of the time she's mimicking an American accent that sounds to me like a really bad imitation of a southern accent. Sometimes, she does accents, such as African, so exaggerated that I can hardly understand them! Either should've been an American reader, or just read the book as is. We can figure out who's talking--the book gives us that.

While the gist of the story is a role reversal in the gender power balance, the use of multiple character POVs and a near- (and far-) future setting elevates the narrative to something more complex. The shifting dynamics do surprise, likely reflecting my own built-in paradigms, but I think a general audience acculturated to a patriarchal society will feel the same. The power of “The Power” is how it challenges the assumptions we’ve been nurtured to accept.

I was very excited about the premise of this book. A world dominated by women. I looked forward to seeing the ways in which women used their dominance, thinking naively that they wouldn't also bring the world to war and turmoil. Like many other reviewers I enjoyed the beginning of the book in which the characters were introduced and their stories were being told. I would have preferred the book to remain grounded in the different experiences of the woman with this power rather than dissolving into war and violence. The end left me wanting more.

I was expecting something better after reading the reviews and awards given this novel. The premise is interesting, but the characters, except for Roxy, are poorly written and one-dimensional. The author makes every male out to be a mysoginistic dolt, and God help you if you ever stumble into a Romanian forest!

I will not recommend, nor watch the tv series.

Great concept - but I couldn’t help but notice that I was reminded of “a canticle of lebowitz ”.
Stereotypes abound - Arab sheiks, rowdy, uncivilized Indians and gracious and orderly Americans.
Globally cataclysmic events would include not only US and Russia but (with their huge economies and military power), also China, EU and India - which were conveniently ignored.

This book pulled me in from the first few pages, and I was loathe to put it down until I was done. Alderman tells the story of our world in a time of gender norms turned on the their ear, with believable story lines and clear narrative. The stories flowed smoothly and the characters spoke with realistic voices. While for me it did get a bit too tangled not long before the ending, the final chapters definitely re-engaged me.

I mean I had to, eventually, but it was wildly entertaining and thought provoking the whole time. The comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale are very warranted, but where that book begins essentially en medias res from the perspective of one protagonist, The Power traces the start of a global change from several viewpoints and feels like a bigger sister story. Loved it.

Loved her other book Disobedience, and so I really wanted to love The Power. The Power starts out really strong and compelling, but unfortunately, I lost interest halfway through. Too heavy handed, repetitive and plot too slow. I thought it was me, but the person who gifted me the book (my former English teacher) confessed he couldn't get past the first half either.

An amazing flip to our "history". Is it a feminist take? Is it, we r finally turning the tables on the patriarchy?
The Power is very timely for the #me too movement, trumpism, and the feeling that the world is out of control.
It is an extreme example of woman taking control, but also a realistic look at what we as woman have faced for centuries. Rape, chattel, seen as spoils of war, seen as lesser mentally and physically. Laws passed to control our bodies and medical decisions.
I highly recommend The Power for anyone who is a fan of Margaret Attwood and who enjoys a cautionary tale of a dystopian future. Excellent!

Some parts did drag on a little, but was a good read on the whole. Very thought provoking around subjects involving gender, power and the capacity for violence. Power contains two of my favorite ingredients for a good book: intellectual stimulation by making me think about something new or new thinking about something old, and an element of suspense. INMHO, the characters were not drawn clearly enough to picture them in my minds eye and think if them as real people.

This book is very thought provoking, in as what would happen if women did take over the world. Not as if women were always in charge, but were able to use force to take over. Most men had a problem with that, especially when they were treated as the woman in the Middle East. I could see Atwood written throughout the story. A big influence.

It was kinda interesting for about the first hundred pages. But I think the overall message is: Not only are women with power just as bad as men, they are worse and will destroy the world. I didn't find anything new in this narrative, the characters are very one dimensional, and overall it was a disappointing read.

At first glance, this book feels distinctly feminist - women rise up with their new power and take over the world - but i feel like that would be a grave disservice to this book.

It is clearly about power. The forms of it, the patterns it follows, and the way it can change a person. Parts of this book are difficult to read as a consequence, but all of it feels plausible and ultimately honest.

For those more curious about the story itself, there is a broad cast of likeable characters and a well paced, very unique story within.

This is a well-written novel that loses something with a story that tends to drag and scenarios that feel a little too on the nose to be fresh or captivating. I slogged through to the unrewarding end. It’s a shame, because the subject matter of female versus male power is very timely but this fell short for me.

As reviewed on Inside154 podcast: I loved Naomi Alderman’s The Power so much that I am rearranging my women and violence class to make room for it. Alderman imagines a world in which women come to realize they have a power that no man has: the ability to shock. Borne out of a genetic response to chemicals used during wars, the power lays inside women as they come of age. These women have a skein at their collarbone that stores the power, and the novel traces the inception of the power to the worldwide conflagration caused by it. Interestingly, the novel is written as a frame narrative, so the contemporary world we are living in during which the power has come to affect individual and structures being discussed as history from the standpoint of a longstanding matriarchy. The Power takes gender theory and turns it into a roaring page turner that debunks that idea that if women ruled the world, then there would be only peace. For anyone that digs good speculative fiction with a gender focus, The Power must be added to your summer reading list.

Phenomenal. It is a dystopia for men but in reality, all the things happening to men fictitiously are happening to women today. It is very smartly written, with flashes of humor and a great understanding of people's motivations. It is making me look at the world through a different lens, a deeply unsettling lens. I wish so much that women did have this power, but I'd like to think it would lead to better results. Incredible author; I am going to have to read more by Ms. Alderman.

Pulp fiction with big ideas. Firestarter meets Handmaids. Too many characters with too little character development. The story was all over the place. The mixed styles and rushed timelines made for a scrappy read. The illustrations were just irritating. For all the messaging the only happy woman is the one that finds a man in the end it seems. I know the basic concept is a metaphor but it was a little hard to get over. Electric eels was the best on offer?

Ugh! I really wanted to love this! I read 50% and realized I just didn’t care what happens next, it was too fractured. I’m not one to leave a book unfinished but I have better things to do with my time.

Unsubtle, unpleasant and unoriginal. The whole point of the story seems to be whoever gains power abuses it. Yes, and? Decades ago Thomas Berger's novel REGIMENT OF WOMEN covered the same ground so much more convincingly and creatively. Why this book has gotten so much praise and attention is a mystery.

I thought Power was a fabulous book and I have recommended it to all my friends who love to read, although it may make uncomfortable reading for both men and women alike. Set in the future it`s exciting, initially because for the first time ever, young women suddenly realise that one of the effects of suffering gross pollution in earlier decades is that the genetic pool has morphed. The young women realise that they have this enormous power within their own bodies. The power is a bit like a taser, it builds up as an electrical charge which can then be delivered to other human beings with devastating effect. It is generated in a “skein” which sits between the girls` shoulders and soon the young women are awakening it amongst their elders. As the power slowly corrupts them; some of them start hurting men just because they can.
The personal stories in the book focus on four main characters, one of them a man and all of whom take a different path as the global effects of the power become evident. It is an intriguing and intellectual surmise on religion, gender, politics, killing sprees and human nature and I thoroughly enjoyed it in a gruesome kind of a way. If Power hasn`t already been snapped up by a film maker then is surely will, it would translate brilliantly to the big screen. For me, Power has been an all- time best read, well done to the author.

Whether you like this book or not, it's such an interesting idea. I'm sure it's not original to imagine a world where women have the power, but the characters and their histories make for a compelling exploration. Totally worth reading.

This book is CLEVER. Smart, brutal, able to point out all that is wrong about our society without slamming you over the head with it. How a book can be both sarcastic and genuine at the same time is beyond me, but somehow this book does it.

I've brought this book up a lot to friends and family as a conversation, that was just based on what I read about it on NPR. Now that I've read the ending there is even more to discuss, very thought-provoking. I now wish I knew more of what the "history books" referred to in the novel said about the main characters. I would also like to have a novel written about a character instead of so many characters, although it was necessary to do this one first. I guess I'm saying I would like to see more written in this world both at the time of the change and after.

This one is a real page turner. Good thought experiment, some parts were so terrifying it made me a little queasy. Mainly because as a 6 foot 2, 220 pound guy, I'm not used to the idea of being physically vulnerable. But in this book, every man is vulnerable and physically weaker to almost any woman he meets. And then it hit me. My 100 pound wife has had to deal with that idea on some level for her entire life. Until I read this book, I never considered that point of view. People will abuse power simply because they can. That part of human nature is gender neutral.

This was an interesting take on what it would mean if women truly were exactly like men and had all the power... Very reminiscent of Planet of the Apes, more than an upside down Handmaid’s Tale. The book is good at making the reader uncomfortable, as every good challenge should.

Great SF premise that offers hope of something really special, The Power disappoints by focusing on too few characters and spending much of the novel in Moldova of all places. The ending is a bit of a muddle as well.

Brilliantly written, it both holds a mirror to the way things are and provides clear-eyed, thoughtful, and insightful commentary in spooling out the working of its ingenious premise. All while artfully developing and telling the stories of a handful of engaging characters. Carries the DNA of Atwood and LeGuin. I thought of both authors while reading the book, and understood why when I read the acknowledgements and learned they were both mentors to the author.

Well, I guess absolute power corrupts absolutely after all.

When women evolve an electric ability, the world begins to see a power shift between men and women. The novel is pretty clever and full of poignant satire - the way men have to "walk home in pairs for safety" and pretty, young (and slightly dumb) men are replaced on the evening news, etc.

The overarching narrative, however, goes to show that anyone in a powerful position has the chance to really screw it up for the rest of the world.

Violence and war aren't necessarily "male" attributes. Rather, they are fallout from the people in charge letting their power get the best of them.

Thought provoking novel. I found myself disturbed and in some cases appalled by the behavior of the women in the book, and then each time realized that's exactly what has and is happening in our world, but it's the men in the position of power.

Such a fantastic tale about gender! The story sucks you in, and then you find yourself chewing on what you've read, trying to make sense of our nonsensical reality. As a woman reading this, I felt conflicted- I hunger for the power denied me by my sex, but I also seek peace. Oh, what a fraught existence we humans lead!

Great book. Really yhought provoking. Very well written. I did not like the end however. I felt like the author ran out of ideas and ended before the book was really over. I think it's still worth reading but the ending was not satisfying.

I like the idea of women having a biological power, but I found the book overrated. It was a good idea which I felt wasn't well-executed. It was hard to follow the characters and I felt they were being manipulated to an end, but wasn't quite sure what end.

I am not into sci-fi however there were some very good ideas when comparing life with both sex’s being in charge. I did not find this a good read but thought the letters at the end added to the story.

SPOILERS BELOW. FAIR WARNING.

After devouring the reviews, I bought it, expecting a thriller on the order of Stephen King's "Firestarter." I got that for half a book. What I did not get was "Animal Farm" or something with the metal fabric of a great novel.

The thought and execution of this work are remarkable to the point that it "electrifies" the reader with a world reeling in total, gender-bent chaos, in which men have no power at all to control women who kill with a mere touch. Some of the projections of the reformations of world religions around this event are disconcertingly plausible, and others, such as mass uprisings in "oppressed countries" are expected and even enjoyable, as once-chained women now turn the tables once and for all. Alderman's narrative style is handsome where it contains itself to describing events that move the plot. Certain scenes, such as the baptism of Mother Eve's sisterhood in the ocean, or Saudi Women melting engine blocks in their rage to demonstrate what they now have in their bodies, or the horrific removal of Roxy's skein, are terrifyingly memorable.

Unfortunately, where it fails to deliver anything more, "The Power" becomes an allegory not much better than a clumsy feminist fairy tale. The changed women of the world do suffer from human weaknesses but as an afterthought. 300,000 new non-combatants seem to hold their own against an exiled Saudi King with a war chest of trillions of dollars, millions of male mercenaries, scientists, ex-KGB, bombs, missiles, bullets and whatever else thrown at a country half the size of Moldova. (More on that.) No traditionally religious person, male or female, is depicted as kind save in self-sacrifice for the sake of the estranged girls seeking shelter. Mobsters are capable of self-sacrifice and nuns who denounce The Power are thrown atop the funeral pile with a sly smile. Men's weenies are shocked into becoming erect at the behest of the sisterhood in what I gather to be the mirror image of modern genital mutilation -- as if women who can do that sort of sadism would seek to do so en masse in retaliation for... for what again? For the practice of a group that amounts to less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the whole population?

The author makes short shrift of the fact that male armies have been fighting wars for thousands of years and that electricity can only arc so high. Helicopters with mounted machine guns would do more significant damage to a surge of women than is appropriately depicted, with the heavier caliber ammunition passing through one to the next a hundred yards deep no matter how they aimed their hoard, or really, anything at all in the way of press. Men would not wade into combat with rubber boots and battery packs and cattle prods unless they were the most clueless armed force ever to take a command. Snipers kill at hundreds of yards and seem unemployed for thinning numbers. Why did the British keep their empire for as long as they did? Alas, magnificent displays of electrical energy would knock out the Moldovan communications if the transmitters were ungrounded anywhere nearby, leaving those armies cut off most of the time, or repairing radios. Even if they were grounded, I doubt the impedance depicted would stop them from shorting out.

It is my opinion that women love men no matter what their powers be, and this shall always be the case. For men to grow puerile, shrinking in the face of The Power, without the strength of better women to encourage them is ludicrous. Women act like tyrants -- all of them! We're shown addiction to a drug as something inconsequential, a means to an end. It is deemed proper to nuke the planet and start over because of some mumbo-jumbo voice in the head of Mother Eve regarding the obliteration of the patriarchy. And thus 5,000 years of female dominance in which the cliches that we now entirely conquer as a modern society become the new normal. No, this can't be the third act of this book. The more significant majority of women would stop all this from happening.

Naomi Alderman can be relied upon to come up with an interesting concept. Here, though, she uses a rather ho-hum device to enable her plot to proceed – I found it expedient rather than original. The ‘skein’ is an electrical force field that emerges from the fingertips of young girls, a power that is passed on to the older female population and which enables women to take over the world.

Told from a number of different perspectives, the characters are more like cyphers: forceful Roxy hell-bent on avenging her mother’s murder, red-hot journo-blogger Tunde, pushy politician Margot, her ‘mis-wired’ daughter Jocelyn, ruthless (and bonkers) Tatiana Moskalev, president of the eastern European republic of Bessapara, and last but by no means least, the god-like Allie aka Mother Eve. Not one of these I wished to cheer on.

The subject matter of women’s power (or lack thereof) invites inevitable comparisons with A Handmaid’s Tale but whereas Margaret Atwood gave us a menacing creation of the utmost subtlety and nuance, both convincing and terrifying in its vision of the future, in contrast The Power suffers, in my view, from a fatal lack of imagination. It is – oh, the irony – powerless.

Thoughtful construction of an alternative world where women have “the power”. What this book really does is explore our underlying human nature no matter our gender. When you find yourself nodding along with the protagonists until everything starts to unravel you’ll understand what I mean...!!

The best book I have read in years. Years! Maybe decades! The Power is brilliant and, as if that weren't enough, compelling and un-put-downable and, as if that weren't enough, empowering and timely and revelatory and, as if that weren't enough, peopled by great characters. I will be recommending this to everyone I know. I loved it loved it loved it.

I could not put this book down. What an interesting and innovative premise. I did not like the ending, but everything up to the ending I loved. It is a very though provoking book on the role Power takes in our lives.

Start this when you have some time; you may not be able to put it down. Nature switches men's and women's relative power to do violence -- to do other things, too, but violence remains humanity's top value. That being the case, does the switch really change the world or just turn it upside down? Does shifting powerful versus powerless roles resolve problems, or must we find different, less simple alternatives? Thoughts from the book: "Power doesn't care who uses it." "We can choose differently." A good complement for reading and discussion might be Orwell's Animal Farm.

When I sat there appalled at the treatment of men when women came into their "power", I recognized that women, today, in this world, were already treated as such. It opened my eyes even wider than they already are.

This was originally a two star review but in fairness I took another look at the book and found it even worse on second reading. There is a subgenera of science fiction that deals with the question, what would the world be like if it was dominated by women rather than men. Some of it is quite good and interesting (e.g. Alice Sheldon's "Houston, Huston Do You Read?"), some are thoughtful meditations (Phillip Wyle's "The Disappearance") others are more like adventure stories (e.g. Stephen King's "Sleeping Beauties") and then there is "The Power". The premise is that women have acquired the ability to produce and channel electrical energy through their hands to deliver shocks of varying power. Now this is a very interesting idea (however improbable) with all sorts of implications that could go lots of interesting places, but doesn't. In most such stories the underlying idea is that a world run by women would be much better for everyone. Not here. The book is philosophically incoherent but seems to suggest that if women were the dominant sex they would simply take over the traditional male role and oppress the opposite sex (including gang rape of men). Furthermore, in order to make the plot work the author gives women god-like powers to throw lightning bolts, melt automobiles, read minds, perform "miracle" cures and so forth. The social implications of this would be incredible but the author has no interest in that. I found it a very slow read and by page 100 or so I was ready to quit. But, having paid for the book, I struggled on to finish it. This vividly demonstrates the fallacy of sunk costs.

Revenge is a dish best served cold and with a bolt of lightning.

Remember that scene from Star Wars Return of the Jedi where The Emperor shot blue lightning out of his fingers to attack Luke?
Well think angry sapphic Spice Girls with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity shooting out of them.

The premise sounded bad so i held off reading this. I should have trusted my male intuition.
'World War Z' zombies take over the world.
'Robopocalypse' robots take over the world. Both were well written books told from multiple points of view. Vignettes.

'The Power' women take over the world.
From chapter one it felt like i was being screamed at. Book lacked nuance, a subtlety to its story telling. Felt like i was taking a beating with a bat wrapped with lightning.
A poorly written book. A plot that was incoherent, terrible dialogue, characters that were one dimensional and just boring, dull, and boring.

Who are the main players? Let the reader get to know the main characters.
Roxy is attacked by two men then she turns into Storm from X-Men or is that X-Women?
Allie is raped by her stepfather then kills him with a 1.21 gigawatt lightning bolt and talks to god.

Violent and sadistic. This is what empowered women do? #Metoo?
Once again poorly written!
I'll take my chances with the zombies, the male ones.

Very much the inheritor of Atwood's mantle. But also uniquely clever, attuned to the recent shifts in gender discourse. Alderman has lovely clear balanced prose, and even though you know what's coming at the end, the narrative is never not compelling.

First, the e-book I downloaded was defective. At about 65% read, it went blank and froze my Kindle. I had to go to a chapter past that point and manually page forward to close to where it froze up and start reading again from there. Then at the very end, it blanked out again. Talked with Kindle support but after troubleshooting, couldn't find an answer. They said their copy was working! Must be my device. Nope. Never had a problem with my device until this book. So I returned the book. Second, I thought the book really didn't work. It was interesting and thought-provoking, but after a point just fell apart, and became rushed and incoherent.

Bleak affirming gender and power. Once i started this ride, there was no stopping till it was over and I had consumed every word. Thank you Naomi, your words will be buzzing in my head for a while now?. I too have felt the fear of walking alone on the road after dark. In an era when Weinsteinig is now a verb, very timely.

This reads like an MRA's wet dream of what a feminist novel would be like. Spoiler alert...The women in the novel get a bunch of power and then they use it to rape, torture and eventually murder most of the men (who are also horrible, because in this book everyone is horrible, except this one dude, who for some reason is still shooting pictures on film). It's gross and also boring and doesn't make any sense.

Just marvellous. Completely believable, with compelling narrative voices and excellent pacing. Takes the story somewhere that is completely logical but not predictable. I'll be recommending it to everyone I see for the next few months!

Awful and predictable. Given this book for Christmas. Love to read, for example The Gate to Women's Country (Tepper) or series by Octavia Butler.
The story plot is predictable after only a few chapters. Donation material (maybe). Wonder what you have to do to get on the "Best of 2017" lists these days. Schlocky.

This book is absolutely horrible. It's stuff that shouldn't be published. There was a decent germ of an idea that could've been turned into something good but it simply wasn't. The accolades this book is getting show that critics are either clueless or on the take or part of group think. And it's really sad to see Atwood lend her credibility to this garbage. Even the greats fall sometimes too I guess.

Why was it so horrible?

1. Terribly written. There are hundreds of sentences that will make anyone with a sense for quality cringe. I mean really bad stuff. How does stuff like this get past an editor? Oh wait, there aren't editors anymore apparently.

2. The story is incoherent and simply not compelling once you get beyond the basic idea.

3. The characters are never developed, unsympathetic, and wooden.

4. The book has no subtlety, is full of cliches, and overall makes no sense.

5. The end feels like the author was just throwing in the towel and desperately trying to end the thing and put it out of its misery.

I wish people who had good ideas would take the time to develop something of value and that there were editors who would work with them to make it happen. But since that no longer happens and publishers can rely on sycophantic critics to hype books, people who want real literature are often left wasting our time. Sad state of affairs.

The opening half of this book is excellent, and I was all set to give it a 5 start review. However, although the different characters start to come together, which promises a wonderful culmination to the plot, the book unfortunately loses its way and ends up with a pile of psychobabble with the thread of the story just left hanging in a very unsatisfactory way.

Because of the excellent idea and start to the book, however, I would have still given it three stars if it weren't for the not-so-subtle Hasbara that is snuck in half way through. To characterise the bad guy as the Bad Guy, he first makes disparaging remarks about homosexuals. Fine, that makes him a Bad Guy. Then he expresses contempt for Jews. Sure, he is a Bad Guy. But then he expresses contempt for Zionists. Really? Doesn't that make him a Good Guy? The author seems unaware of the growing number of Jews (and others) speaking out against the evil racism of the Zionist ideology. Her conflation of Judaism with Zionism, in a science fiction book of all places, is a cheap trick.

The premise is that women become in charge of the Earth. They do so using a special ability received at birth. The Power is basically to give electric shock to men when they get out of line. The book is basically for YA crowd. It appears to have been written in hope of becoming the next Hunger Games. Sorry, Ithink not. Might make a good illustrated novel, or,as I used to call them Comic Books.

I'm a voracious reader and I rarely run into a book I dislike this much. I actually read 3/4 of it and went to the last 3 pages to skim because I didn't want to give another minute of my time to this cliche-ridden, uninteresting book. Sorry, Author. I never give books one star. Seriously, the "church" leader is called Mother Eve. Gag. Being the feminist that I am, I was hopeful. So much fluff & silliness. Disclosure: I checked it out from the library, so I only lost some time. I buy a lot from the store but this is one I'm glad I didn't.

I'm disappointed I wasted my money on this book. I won't even be giving it to the secondhand bookstore, it will be going in the bin where it belongs in my opinion. I thought I was purchasing something thought provoking to give to my teen daughters. Thankfully, it appears my daughters are becoming discerning readers because my 17yo soon handed the book back to me and said 'Um...you might want to read this first'.

And WOWZA! Think of the crudest language you can and you'll find that abundantly in this book. Think of the most rotten, repulsive things humans can do to one another and you'll also find abundant descriptions of that in this book. Think of places where even art should tread carefully, and this book doesn't hesitate to go there.

I knew this was a dystopian novel but personally, I don't think unlimited F-bombs and graphic descriptions of incest and gang rapes and murders and drugs and violence on nearly every page is needful to be thought provoking. Additionally, Alderman herself is in this book - most of the characters have a similar tone and I could hear Alderman's own life history in her choice and manipulation of certain devices she uses to advance the story line. Sure enough, when I googled her name and read an interview she gave, I wasn't surprised at what her real life history was or the tone of her answers. It had all been right there in the book.

If nothing is sacred to you and 'whatever-goes in the name of art' is your perspective, then you might enjoy this book...but if you like your art tempered with a little decency, then I suggest you pass. By all means...don't hand this book to your kids without reading it first!